I vaguely recall where the length entry in early assembler symbol tables was only 3 bits, hence the 8 character limit on names.
I'm not sure where the 3 bit limit came from, possibly older boxes like the 1401. Or because the first byte in the symbol table entry was the length and you didn't use the left most bit to prevent sign issues. I can't remembe which. -----Original Message----- From: Fargusson.Alan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 11:38 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: An update to the little script I post the other day... There was a 14 character limit on file names in the early versions of Unix. Actually this is filesystem dependent, so the limit exist today if you format a filesystem as SVFS (or something like that), which is actually almost exactly like the V7 filesystem. There was also a limit on how much of a variable name was significant in early C compilers. I don't remember how many characters though. You could have a variable name as long as you wanted, but only the first few characters were significant, which led to some interesting errors. -----Original Message----- From: Lucius, Leland [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 6:34 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: An update to the little script I post the other day... > > Just looked over it now. Very very nice, I think I'll make > good use of it, thank you. > Glad to hear it. It's always good to know something you did was useful to someone. > It's funny, Unix people say (think it was Kernighan or > Ritchie who said it first) that this is a spartan operating > system, that commands, directory, variable names are supposed > to be short and concise (thus the vowel shortage abundance :) > ), but I discovered mainframe hackers' code (be it my MVS > colleague's JCL or the shell code you submitted) is a lot > more spartan when it comes to designating objects. Makes > sense. You mainframe guys were already doing this way before > I was even born, when assembly was high-level and every bit count. > > Guess you are the original hackers :) > HAHAHAHA. There's not much you can do with 8 bytes. I haven't a clue why (there HAD to be a reason), but many names (member names, logons, ...) were limited to 8 bytes, so we were kind of forced to be creative. Actually, now that I think about it, didn't the Unices start out that way too? But, I did get a little carried away with that script... ;-) Leland Confidentiality Warning: This e-mail contains information intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, any dissemination, publication or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. The sender does not accept any responsibility for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or computer system that may occur while using data contained in, or transmitted with, this e-mail. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify us by return e-mail. Thank you.
