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From: Bob.Stout@p6.f506.n106.z1.fidonet.org (Bob Stout)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Data compression algorithms
Message-ID: <17193.24C32414@urchin.fidonet.org>
Date: 17 Jul 89 16:01:43 GMT
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In an article of <14 Jul 89 14:05:55 GMT>, (Richard Sargent) writes:

 >> From: Bob.Stout@p6.f506.n106.z1.fidonet.org (Bob Stout)
 >> The fact that MS-DOS file names are always upper case and may only consist 
 >> of alphanumeric characters plus 15 additional characters (total of 51 
 >> characters out of 256 possible codes) might suggest something. 
 >
 >Really? Try the following at your DOS prompt:
 >
 >c> edlin test<ALT-1-2-8>.dat
 >...
 >c> dir .dat
 >
 >I think you'll be surprised. All codes from 128 through 255 are acceptable

OK, you got me - DOS internally couldn't care less, but the docs for most  
versions of DOS will tell you that only A-Z, 0-9, and most special characters  
other than '*', '?', '.', and ' ' are legal. If you follow the rules (i.e.  
guaranteed to work for all versions of DOS including those yet to come) laid  
down my Microsoft and IBM, 64 characters should suffice.