Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 17:57:28 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <199803170157.RAA24176@adit.ap.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: <telford AT xenon DOT triode DOT net DOT au>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
From: Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>
Subject: Re: Long file names in plain DOS
Precedence: bulk

At 12:08  3/15/1998 GMT, telford AT xenon DOT triode DOT net DOT au wrote:
>In comp.os.msdos.djgpp Andrew Crabtree <andrewc AT rosemail DOT rose DOT hp DOT com> wrote:
>
>> Martin Stromberg wrote in message <6dhcee$6bb$1 AT antares DOT lu DOT erisoft DOT se>...
>> >Is it possible to get long file names in DOS 6.22?
>> Bill Currie might have been working on something like this.  Somebody is,
>> not sure if it was him though.  Maybe check the djgpp-workers archive from
>> december or so?
>
>4dos has some scheme where a filename translation table is stored in a file
>which has a reserved (and peculiar) name. Possibly this is the sort of thing
>that started people doing things like 00_index.txt on CDROMS (the 4dos
>technique goes back quite a few years). The slight problem is that only tools
>that understand the trick will handle the long file names. If it's put into
>the DJGPP library then that means only tools compiled with DJGPP.

I have a fairly old copy of 4DOS that I use here. In it, they aren't so much
long names as descriptions. They're stored in a hidden file in each
directory called DESCRIPT.ION.

A good LFN driver should implement the Win95 LFN API, so that any
Win95-aware program will work with it. 4DOS does not, AFAIK.

Nate Eldredge
eldredge AT ap DOT net