Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!gatech!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: 14 character limitation in filenames
Message-ID: <1991Feb1.003532.15719@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 1 Feb 91 00:35:32 GMT
References: <290@sps.com> <20711@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Followup-To: comp.unix.sysv386
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 30

As quoted from <20711@hydra.gatech.EDU> by ken@dali.gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii):
+---------------
| In article <290@sps.com> arm@sps.com (Annette Myjak) writes:
| >can anyone explain why there's the 14 character limitation in filenames
| >(11 + 3 for extension) in interactive unix?
| 
| Cause AT&T is brain dead?  Most all Version 7, System III and System V
| based Unixes have a 14 character filename limit (11+3?  Where'd you
| get that?).  Posix has also followed this silliness...
+---------------

"Silliness"?  I still fail to understand why everyone wants to be able to
create files with humongous names --- I don't enjoy typing 14 character file
names (but don't want to decrease that size, there *is* a tradeoff here), the
30-plus-character names I've seen in use on some BSD systems don't appeal at
all.

(To those who complain, as they did last time, that the 14-char limit means
you can't encode a date in a filename:  information is suppoosed to be stored
*inside* files, not in their filenames!  And "910131193506" fits into a
filename if you absolutely *must* store the date in the filename for some
reason.  (Personally, if I want to locate a file quickly according to some
attribute like that, I'll use an index file.  It's often faster, too.))

++Brandon
-- 
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