Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcso!mjs
From: mjs@hpfcso.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Long filenames on HPUX 6.2
Message-ID: <7370015@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Date: 13 Oct 89 23:43:16 GMT
References: <4243@yunexus.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Lines: 24

>Unfortunately some utilities didn't grok long names. The specific
>instance I uncovered is that ar only handles 14 char filenames.
>...
>[Hey HP: this is still broken under 6.5. Will it be fixed for 7.0?]

This has been known from the beginning, and it was decided then that this would
not be fixed, and that decision stands.

Reason: the file format would have to change to support this, and HP seems to
value backward compatibility more than absolute functional completeness in
every corner case.

>Nice, huh? Not only do you get the wrong module, but the library size
>would grow indefinately.

If you truncate the filename argument before adding it to the archive, it
gets replaced as you would expect.  In fact, the only thing you cannot do
it maintain an archive in which filenames are not actually significant in the
first 14 characters.

--------------
Marc Sabatella
HP Colorado Language Lab (CoLL)
marc@hpmonk