Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 11:34:10 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Alexander Bokovoy <bokovoy AT bspu DOT ac DOT by>
cc: DJGPP mailing list <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Long to short filename converter
In-Reply-To: <199710051656.MAA02764@delorie.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.971006113339.21864B-100000@is>
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On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:

> The problem is in the suggestion that if a program uses long names that
> it runs in DOS box under Win'95 but it not true for every cases - a
> program must work perfectly in raw DOS (with using 8.3 shortcuts instead
> long names) but in a source all file names will be long. If anybody
> write such thing it would be beautiful and helpful tool.

Unless I miss something in your explanation, I don't see how a
conversion tool will help here.  DJGPP programs deal with this problem
(in plain DOS) every day with no need for conversion.  When your
program issues a normal DOS call with a file name that exceeds the 8+3
limits, DOS transparently truncates the name to fit into these limits,
and everything works (you only need to make sure that the long names
are not illegal on MS-DOS, i.e. they don't include characters like
`+', `;' and a bunch of others, don't have more than a single dot,
etc.).  This is why DJGPP ports of GNU programs work on MS-DOS with
minimal changes.  I see no problem here that needs a solution.

A related problem is when you want a program to work in both plain DOS
and Windows 95 on the same machine, with no source changes.  AFAIK,
the only feasible solution to this is to set NameNumericTail to zero.
(Even this solution does not work all the time--because Windows'
truncation with NameNumericTail=0 still differs slightly from DOS
truncation--but it comes very close.)  Here, also, a converter is not
the way to go.