Author Topic: Filenames (pck, tab, mcd) length limit?  (Read 3184 times)

Offline robin

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1203
  • ULTIMATE ROOKIE
    • View Profile
Filenames (pck, tab, mcd) length limit?
« on: January 26, 2015, 09:07:24 pm »
Is there such a thing?

Vanilla files seem to purposely use short names. Was this because of the hardware available at that time? Can I use longer names?

Offline volutar

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 351
  • Vanilla digger & Quality assistant
    • View Profile
Re: Filenames (pck, tab, mcd) length limit?
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2015, 10:05:24 pm »
It's not hardware limitation. It's DOS filename limit called 8.3. 8 letters file some and 3 letters extension. With OpenXcom you can use long names of course. This limit is only for vanilla version.

P.S.  You could just try and see for yourself. Much faster result.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2015, 05:07:00 am by volutar »

Offline Hobbes

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2101
  • Infiltration subroutine in progress
    • View Profile
Re: Filenames (pck, tab, mcd) length limit?
« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2015, 07:20:17 am »
Was this because of the hardware available at that time?

Since you had to type the file name in the DOS command line it made things faster for the human hardware if the name was small ;)

Offline volutar

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 351
  • Vanilla digger & Quality assistant
    • View Profile
Re: Filenames (pck, tab, mcd) length limit?
« Reply #3 on: January 27, 2015, 09:14:22 am »
It's not hardware, it's FAT16 limitation. Each file header record is 32 bytes long.
https://www.maverick-os.dk/FileSystemFormats/FAT16_FileSystem.html#DirectoryEntry
It has nothing with type speed. It's just how things went.

Offline Hobbes

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2101
  • Infiltration subroutine in progress
    • View Profile
Re: Filenames (pck, tab, mcd) length limit?
« Reply #4 on: January 27, 2015, 04:02:06 pm »
It's not hardware, it's FAT16 limitation. Each file header record is 32 bytes long.
https://www.maverick-os.dk/FileSystemFormats/FAT16_FileSystem.html#DirectoryEntry
It has nothing with type speed. It's just how things went.

I was just making a joke... the glorious days of no-GUI :)

Offline volutar

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 351
  • Vanilla digger & Quality assistant
    • View Profile
Re: Filenames (pck, tab, mcd) length limit?
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2015, 04:06:57 pm »
I was just making a joke... the glorious days of no-GUI :)
I felt that ;), but still wanted to give the complete information. Let people know how it came. Pure keyboard, GUIless workflow :)