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Message-ID: <019f01c0be19$da2a02a0$0200a8c0@lifelesswks>
From: "Robert Collins" <robert DOT collins AT itdomain DOT com DOT au>
To: <jmerz42 AT earthlink DOT net>
Cc: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
References: <4 DOT 3 DOT 1 DOT 2 DOT 20010405144831 DOT 021f9008 AT pop DOT ma DOT ultranet DOT com> <3ACCC15F DOT 20606 AT earthlink DOT net>
Subject: Re: OT pondering (WAS: Re: Trailing Periods on File Names)
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 07:46:18 +1000
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathon Merz" <jmerz42 AT earthlink DOT net>
Cc: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2001 5:02 AM
Subject: OT pondering (WAS: Re: Trailing Periods on File Names)


> Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc) wrote:
>
> > At 02:38 PM 4/5/2001, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
<SNIP>
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >
> >
> >> Curious, no? Perhaps this is a side-effect of the potential
aliasing of suffix-less names and the same name with a ".exe" suffix?
> >
> >
> >
> > No, this is Windows madness.  It ignores periods at the end of file
names.
> >
>
> I agree with that, having seen this before, but I am curious... It
seems that
> such functionality did not get there by accident (I cannot think of a
way to
> ignore characters in a filename without some _extra_ coding), so it
must have
> been done for some purpose.  Yet I cannot for the life of me imagine
what
> benefit this produces, or what fault it would circumvent.  Anyone have
ideas
> as to this?
>

IIRC DOS had extra code _added_ to understand that there was a '.' in
the filename. The raw directory entries were 11 characters long, not 12.

Rob


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