From:	"Matthias Paul" <PAUL-MA AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Organization:	Rechenzentrum RWTH Aachen
To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date:	Mon, 8 May 2000 17:59:48 +0100
Subject:	Re: Long File Names
X-mailer:	Pegasus Mail v3.22
Message-ID:	<20ED56E1860@reze-1.rz.rwth-aachen.de>
Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

On Sun, 30 Apr 2000 Bruce Morgen wrote:

> The latest 4DOS *accomodates* 
> Win9x LFNs, but only if the 
> GUI is running.  It does not 
> include duplicate LFN code, 
> it relies on the M$ API to 
> resolve them.  :-(

4DOS 6.01+ (current issue is 6.02B, BTW) will also support LFNs
under plain DOS if it detects that the LFN API is present.
So it works with Caldera s LONGNAME or other solutions. There
are two 4DOS.INI directives to control how 4DOS uses LFNs,
but right now, I can t remember their exact names, maybe
Win95LFN=Yes/No was one of them???

However, the problem with LFN lies deeper, as 4DOS.COM is only
a command shell (that is an application) and thereby is restricted
to use the systems APIs. It must not (and does not) bypass the
(virtual) filesystem to mangle with LFNs itself. This is the
same as with DR-DOS 7.02+ COMMAND.COM, which also utilizes LFN s 
as soon as it detects the LFN API, be in in Windows 9x/NT DOS boxes 
or under pure DOS.
One of the problem is that the DR-DOS BDOS kernel itself (without 
the LFN driver loaded) does not remove the orphanted LFN directory 
entries when deleting files (as MS-DOS 7+ does), so they will be
left on disk, wasting space and causing disk tools to display
warnings (and CHKDSK from running...). If you want to ensure proper
removal of any LFN stuff even with plain DOS (no LFN driver loaded),
the DR-DOS kernel would need to be changed in this respect - which
would result in a larger memory footprint... (my estimate ca. 0,5 KB),
or just remove any stuff like this while running pure MS-DOS 7+.

BTW, it IS possible to disable Windows 9x usage of long filenames
(I don t know if this is drive specific or global) by changing a
setting in the Registry. I doubt many newer Windows applications will
continue to work as they expect to use long filenames, but I would
stop Windows from "corrupting" the FAT standard. I could look this
up at home how to achieve this.

 Matthias
 
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Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
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