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Aucbvax.6017 fa.info-vax utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax Mon Feb 1 10:22:35 1982 Extended Filenames under UNIX OS >From mhtsa!mjs@Berkeley Mon Feb 1 10:18:56 1982 While the comparison is unfair, it is at least illustrative: OS/360/370 restricts you to 8 characters per pathname component (still!). More to the point, though, I agree that 14 characters has cramped my naming style on several occasions, but would probably spend weeks trying to fill 80 characters with just one component! Perhaps a happier medium (unix-wizards, please take note) would be 30 characters (or 28, if the inode number stored in the directory entries is expanded to 32 bits). This is basically fairly easy to do in the operating system, but there is a whole lot of software out there which is NOT parameterized with respect to DIRSIZ (from whichever #include file it comes). It is a big job, though I expect that the next (current?) BSD group could pull it off with no major holes left unfilled. Also, there is the cost of the (doubled) directory entries, more directories which have indirect blocks, and general performance degradation. Is it worth it? I dunno. Does anyone out there have any useful statistics for the net(s)?

Marty Shannon, Jr. Bell Labs, MH, NJ (201) 582-6272 (mail to mhtsa!mjs is more likely to reach me, tho')

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