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From: as@castle.ed.ac.uk (A Stevens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn,eunet.micro.acorn
Subject: Re: DOS/UNIX/etc <-> ADFS Filename Mapping
Message-ID: <7881@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jan 91 10:25:50 GMT
References: <7850@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Jan16.103434.797@cns.umist.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University Computing Service
Lines: 38

(W.R.T. H. Roger's reply to my proposal)

Phew - I knew someone out there had to have tackled the dreaded
long file names problem.   Well done Mr Rogers!  I thought
for one moment I'd have to rerach for the C compiler.
Is there any chance that
source for (the conversion routines at least?) will arrive with
your (eagerly awaited) UNIX lib?  Beg beg...  the critical thing
is, after all, that *everyone's* programs can behave in the same
way.

On a more serious note some queries / a wish-list:

(1) is there any way of configuring the ``common'' filename suffixes 
(e.g. by setting environment variables).  I am sure I'd want
.lisp .lsp .pl .nip .l .sml .ml .thm .eqn .1 .2 .3 .4 ...
switched to preceding directories, but I am equally sure other
people might find such behaviour irrelevant or reprehensible.

(2) It would be really good if there were some mechanism for recording
the abbreviations made in a file in the relevant directory so that
the things could be restored in the ADFS -> UNIX... direction.
This is very important for people like me who shuffle big
systems comprising complex file-structures backwards and forwards
between Arch and the rest of the work.

 I know it would be tedious and slow ... but it would be 
tedious and slow in Arch milli-seconds rather than tedious
and slow in my seconds.   As is I have to do some really gross-me-out
hacks with shell scripts to move stuff tar-ed off on the my Arch
back onto UNIX.


(3) Frank L.'s ``tar'' (superficially at least)
seems to behave as you describe.  Does this mean Frank uses your libs?


Andrew