On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 04:42:56PM -0400, [email protected] wrote: > Case-sensitivity may be a matter of preference, but I fail to see any > possible rightness about the directory depth, filename length, or > filename character limits. Especially when combined. > When the filesystem was introduced, sure, bytes and clocks were precious. > Most systems have improved since then.
To me they seem like what could easily have been sensible compromises at the time between practicality and letting the user do absurd things like creating a file called (in Unix semantics) /a/aa/aaa/aaaa/aaaaa/aaaaaa/aaaaaaa/aaaaaaaa/aaaaaaaaa/aaaaaaaaaa/aaaaaaaaaaa/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa but I don't know enough about VMS or its filesystems' internals to go into details. Filename character limits are also perfectly sensible. Unix, for example, doesn't let you use / or NUL in filenames, and for all practical purposes you shouldn't be using a vast number of other characters either - \'"()*;?& and so on. Unix will let you shoot yourself in the foot with those, of course. It'll let you shoot your admin in the foot too by, eg, putting a space in a filename that one of his scripts later barfs over. -- David Cantrell | Godless Liberal Elitist Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
