Ahouxs.110 net.unix-wizards utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!npois!houxi!houxs!hansen Thu Feb 11 10:31:56 1982 Re: long filenames I've worked on two different systems which allowed considerably longer names than the Unix system does (I was going to say 'than Unix does,' but I'm now told *Unix* is an adjective, not a noun). After using them and losing them, I find myself missing that feature tremendously. Everytime I see a filename like mdep.c, I cringe. Does that name mean machine dependent code.c, mother's favorite department stores.c, a medical program dealing with drugs given in epsilon increments, or WHAT? I CAN'T tell from the *filename*! If I use some of the subsystems in common use around here, such as SCCS or pack/unpack, I can't even use all 14 characters for the filenames. These programs tack on their own prefix/suffix and now limit me to twelve character names. One comment about those systems: a person did have help from the system that made it much, MUCH easier to deal with the longer filenames. Such features as filename completion and filename prompting were available at the shell level. (Actually at the exec or monitor level, depending on that particular system's terminology). For filename completion, we hit the escape key and the filename was completed out as far as possible. For filename prompting, we hit the question mark key and a list of possible filenames appeared. I have seen neither of these features in the standard Unix shell or cshell. There are a number of home-grown "shells" floating around which have some of these features, but, not being a supported product, they tend to be used by only a few people or a couple of systems. Also, they tend to load down the system because they have to be run in raw mode (without any support from the tty driver), generally two to three times the size of sh or csh, and usually don't have enough people using them to warrant having the shared-text bit set. I guess the things I'd like to see added to the Unix system are: 1) longer file names, say ~30 characters long; and 2) support for them at the shell level, giving both filename completion and filename prompting. Tony Hansen houxs!hansen ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.