From: "Matthias Paul" 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany eMail: Web : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html -------------------------------------------------------------------