Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!baird!jim From: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp Subject: Filenames in HP-UX (was Re: Switching from Sun to HP) Message-ID: Date: 25 Apr 91 13:20:39 GMT References: <101950205@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com> Sender: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk Organization: Computer Science Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland. Lines: 29 In-reply-to: tay@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com's message of 19 Apr 91 04:00:20 GMT In article <101950205@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com> tay@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Mike Taylor) writes: It seems like it would be possible for your software to check to see if long filenames have been enabled during installation or startup by touching a 15+ character filename and checking the results. Then tell the user to convert since some people don't until they have to Come off it! (I haven't heard of any good reasons not to convert). In that case, why not ship HP-UX with long filenames enabled by default? Wake up HP! Your customers like long filenames. Your kernel supports them. It costs you next to nothing to have support for them switched on by default. Your own staff see "no good reasons not to", so why not just DO IT??? One of the most frustrating things I have experienced with HP-UX is its pig-headed insistence on making everything look like System V when the kernel is really BSD. It's a pity it took years for HP-UX to give us job control and reliable signals even though the code was in the kernel. Even now, customers don't get long filenames unless they tweak things. [BTW, SVID compliance or System V compatibility arguments justifying this are a nonsense. The HP-UX directory format is BSD, not System V, even when the kernel is enforcing 14 character names.] Jim