Subject: Re: 31 Character File Name Length Limit

From: Alon <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2001 20:26:53 -0500

This is very true.  Which is why most OS's don't have length limits anymore 
(mostly). Unfortunately I still have to deal with an OS that does. I'm 
hoping the switch to OS X will eventually solve my problem, but for now I'd 
settle for a comprimise. A simple solution to the truncation problem is to 
do what Microsoft does:

Program Files   = progra~1
Programs I Use  = progra~2
Programs        = progra~3.......etc.

It isn't very pretty I know, but it does work.  The names might not be 
particularly obvious, but at least they'd be seen on the Mac side.

aLoN

>  What happens if the file is only unique after 31 chararcters? You end
>  up with 2 file names the same...
>
>  Name mangling is actually a difficult problem to solve...
>
>
>> I just started using NetaTalk on my linux box to serve files to Macintosh
>> clients.  Everything went well, until I noticed that all files with more
>> than 31 characters in their name length were not showing up at all on the
>> mac clients.  I know macs have a name length limit, but I'd like for the
>> clients to at least see the longer-named files, even if truncated.
>

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From: Matthew Geier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 14:21:52 +1000

> particularly obvious, but at least they'd be seen on the Mac side.

 The Microsoft one is simpler that it looks - it does that name mangle
at file creation time. Windows file systems store 2 names. The 8.3 and
the 'long' one. It doesn't do it on the fly like Samba does, and
NetAtalk needs to do. You have to attempt to get the same 'mangled' name
each time. M$ does it once and saves in in the Filesystem.

 I understood MacOS is suppose to handle it by it self - HFS+ supports
longer names, but Finder doesn't. I seem to recall some time back in the
dim dark past, NetAtalk sent longer names to Macs, but some Finder
versions crashed in response instead of truncating the name.

 I guess you could find the bit of code that hides the long names,
disable it and see how your mac works. Maybee OS9 fixed this problem.
Classic under OSX beta seems to handle it gracefully.

-- 
Matthew Geier			[email-masked]
Arts IT Unit			+61 2 9351 4713
Sydney University

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From: Alon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 18:27:48 -0500

This is a very good point. Mac's truncate Joliet cds on their own, so I 
guess they could probably handle and truncate long-named network 
shares...if they were being shown by the server in the first place.  Does 
anybody know offhand where in the code the hiding of long file names is? 
If I can find the time in the next few weeks I'll have a look, but it'd be 
nice if someone knew where it was already.

aLoN

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From: Alistair Riddell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 15:11:50 +0100 (BST)

Macs don't truncate Joliet filenames; they don't have the capability to
read the Joliet extensions so they use the ISO9660 names which are pretty
much DOS 8.3 format.

-- 
Alistair Riddell - BOFH
IT Support Department, George Watson's College, Edinburgh
Tel: +44 131 447 7931 Ext 176       Fax: +44 131 452 8594
Microsoft - because god hates us