Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!sri-unix!teknowledge-vaxc!mkhaw
From: mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Long names in System V (really mixed case)
Message-ID: <11476@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 5-Apr-87 15:18:10 EST
Article-I.D.: teknowle.11476
Posted: Sun Apr  5 15:18:10 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Apr-87 23:42:31 EST
References: <040187.111854.dan@ibm.com> <311@desint.UUCP> <776@jumbo.dec.com> <424@bacchus.MIT.EDU> <6130@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP (Michael Khaw)
Distribution: world
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Lines: 23

Mixed case filesnames could be a real headache on a Apollo system running
Domain/IX (Apollo's flavor of Unix).  On the one hand, Unix is case sensitive;
on the other hand, Aegis (the underlying "native" OS) is case-insensitive.
How does Apollo deal with this?  A Unix name like "FooBar" becomes an
Aegis name like ":foo:bar".

Ideally, this doesn't make a bit of a difference, but in practice, Domain/IX
sometimes :) does break and you have to drop into Aegis to fix things, and
Aegis commands have an odd habit of sometimes not being able to deal with
filenames containing ':'s.

By the way, similar considerations apply to Eunice running under VAX/VMS.
Uppercase characters in Eunice filenames get '$' prefixed (or is it suffixed?)
when seen from VMS, and VMS has a 14 char filename, 14 char filetype limit.
So, you're really talking about limiting filenames to 7 chars plus a '.'
plus N chars for the "filetype".  Why would anyone try to port X to Eunice if
X ports to VMS?  Who knows, but it's still a potential problem.

Mike Khaw
-- 
internet:  mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
usenet:	   {hplabs|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|sri-unix}!mkhaw%teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
USnail:	   Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA 94303