To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: 32-bit filenames
Message-ID:	<19970103.123734.4431.1.chambersb@juno.com>
References:	<32C03E84 DOT 5662 AT cse DOT unsw DOT edu DOT au>
	<5aggc3$jdv AT nexp DOT crl DOT com>
From:	chambersb AT juno DOT com (Benjamin D Chambers)
Date:	Thu, 02 Jan 1997 15:32:55 EST

On Thu, 02 Jan 1997 14:20:51 GMT weiqigao AT crl DOT com (Weiqi Gao) writes:
>Someone <s2193209 AT cse DOT unsw DOT edu DOT au> wrote:
>
>>Hello all,
>>  Having programmed with BorlandC for 5 years, I recently moved into
>>GCC. Since GCC is 32-bit, I was wondering whether it would be 
>possible
>>to write a shell program which would allow the listing and i/o of 
>32-bit
>>filenames.
>
>Since DJGPP is for DOS and DOS doesn't have a "32-bit" file system, I
>think it would be impossible to use the "32-bit" file names.  DJGPP
>does support the long file names under Windows 95, but that's a kludge
>of the "16-bit" file names, not a "32-bit" file name.
>
>--
>Weiqi Gao
>weiqigao AT crl DOT com
>
>
I thought I'd apply simple counting to this problem... Let's see...
32-bits.... I think that's four bytes... Gee!  DOS already supports 64.24
bit filenames (8.3 bytes) :)  IMHO, the bit size of the system has
nothing to do with the filename system, since filenames are generally
stored as strings (or similar).  After all, 16-bit dos can still give
more than 2 bytes in a string, and 32 bits wouldn't make any difference. 
The difference is in the memory models and addressing systems, not in the
FAT or string handling (although with 32-bit integers, you can move
strings 32bits at a time, but you can do this under 16bit dos too -
that's a function of the chip, not the OS {unless somebody used a DOS
call to copy a string <shudder> :) }).

...Chambers

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