Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!UIAMVS.BITNET!AWCTTYPA
From: AWCTTYPA@UIAMVS.BITNET ("David A. Lyons")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: GS/OS and FSTs
Message-ID: <8903181745.aa00298@SMOKE.BRL.MIL>
Date: 18 Mar 89 22:35:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 38

>Date:         Fri, 17 Mar 89 17:29:39 GMT
>From:         Kareth <mentor.cc.purdue.edu!asd@PURDUE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Greetings
>
>[...] But the ProDOS fst is hardly taking care of implementing that
>file system to the full capability of GS/OS.  I don't want to have 7
>or so partitions on the Finder desktop for a 200 meg drive. [...] Can
>only put 53? files in root directory.  [...] Isn't GS/OS capable of
>handling something in the Gigabyte range, with long file names (more
>than 64 char), etc, w/o having to resort to partitions and stuff?
>That's why there should be a GSOS.FST.  Or maybe a PRO2.FST that will
>take care of handling the full power of GS/OS.

Okay, let's get this straighter.

The ProDOS file system is inherently and permanently limited to 32M
volumes, 16M files, 15-character filenames.  The ProDOS FST correctly
and fully implements the ProDOS file system.  It even goes beyond
that and lets you create "extended" files that have two forks; these
files can't be read through ProDOS 8.  But extending the ProDOS
format to more than 32M volumes, 16M files, and 15-character
filenames won't work.  You can't do it and still end up with
something readable by ProDOS 8.

GS/OS can indeed deal with volumes and files up to 2^32 bytes = 4096
megabytes (4 gigabytes).  It can also handle extremely long pathnames
and filenames (8000 characters at present, 65535 without changing the
call parameter lists), and any characters except ":" (and NUL?) can
appear in filenames.

This does _not_ mean you should expect that any FST will support all
this; most file systems (and therefore their FSTs) will be more
limiting than GS/OS itself.

 --David A. Lyons              bitnet: awcttypa@uiamvs
   DAL Systems                 CompuServe:  72177,3233
   P.O. Box 287                GEnie mail:    D.LYONS2
   North Liberty, IA 52317     AppleLinkPE: Dave Lyons