Re: [MacPerl] file length

[Eric Albert <ejalbert@cs.stanford.edu>]

At 7:17 PM -0800 3/15/2000, John W Baxter wrote:
>At 19:22 -0500 3/15/2000, Chris Nandor wrote:
>>>Does the max file name/path length vary with versions of MacOS?
>>
>>No, it is universally 31 chars.
>
[snip]
>   The underlying file name limit (in HFS+) is now 256 Unicode characters,
>but the needed calls aren't there yet to use them.

Actually, they exist as of Mac OS 9 -- you can have >31 characters in 
a filename, finally.  If you're familiar with the Toolbox, the 
routines that you need to use are ones that use FSRefs instead of 
FSSpecs.  See 
<http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macos8/pdf/FileManger.pdf> for 
details.

The change in routines (which is necessary to keep old apps from 
breaking, much as there are many old apps that use 8.3 filenames 
still on Windows) means that very few applications use long filenames 
to date.  Heck, the Finder doesn't even use them -- it'll truncate 
the names to a more recognizable format than 8.3 that still isn't all 
that pretty.  Actually, the only application/component that I'm aware 
of that uses long filenames is MRJ 2.2 -- any Java application 
running under MRJ 2.2 can create files with >31 characters in the 
name.  I imagine that more apps will adopt the new API eventually, 
but most will probably wait to see if/when the Finder does.

-Eric

--
Eric Albert                     ejalbert@cs.stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~ejalbert/

# ===== Want to unsubscribe from this list?
# ===== Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to macperl-request@macperl.org