Date:	Wed, 5 Jan 2000 11:17:47 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender:	eliz AT is
To:	ron flory <ron DOT flory AT adtran DOT com>
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: djgpp: gnu make ver 3.77 (long file names in 'include' directive) under NT 4.0
In-Reply-To:	<387297B4.4555B526@adtran.com>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.1000105111730.7920c-100000@is>
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Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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On Wed, 5 Jan 2000, ron flory wrote:

> > You can if you upgrade to Windows 2000 or if you
> > get one of those really buggy LFN drivers.
> 
>  Are you saying that NT4.0 DosBox API cannot accept a long filename for
> input?  I thought that only old-old-style MsDos FCB's were limited to
> 8.3 format, wheras ascii-z input strings were essentially free-form.

Please read section 3.3 of the DJGPP FAQ list, it has the full story.
In a nutshell, DOS programs need a special API to access long file
names, and NT's DOS box doesn't include that API.

> I know that path/file strings -returned- by several calls may be mangled
> to the name~1 format, but I thought full-length input strings were
> acceptable and automatically converted to the mangled form when the call
> was made.

Well, you thought wrong.  The legacy DOS calls don't know anything
about the ~1 numeric tails, they simply truncate the file names to 8+3
limits.  And transforming file names which are invalid on DOS, like
foo.bar.baz or .foo+bar, involves much more than simply attaching the
numeric tail.

In sum, you need cooperation of the OS to support long names, and NT
doesn't cooperate.

However, I disagree with the assessment that the LFN drivers are
``really buggy''.  There's a driver written by DJGPP users which looks
very promising.  You can find its URL in messages posted to this news
group a few weeks ago.  I suggest to download and try it, perhaps you
will find that it solves your problem well enough.

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