Windows 95/98/2000/XP:
Long names limited to 256 characters, unlimited number of periods. No +, ,
, ; , = , or [ ] are allowed. The first six characters of the name, and first
three characters behind the last period will be used to create an alias entry
that conforms to the DOS file naming rules, and will contain a ~n as the last
of the 8 characters before the file extension. The ~ is literal, and the n
represents a number that will make the file name unique.
example: This.Is.A.Wierd.Name will be represented as a label reading THISIS~1.NAM
Later creation of This.Is.A.Really.Weird.Name will yield an alias file label
of THISIS~2.NAM. If you want to preserve your own numbered versions of a file,
you must place the number either in the first six characters of the file name,
or in the first three after the last period for this to show up in the file
listings.
eol character:
OS/2:
File naming in OS/2 depends on whether the file directory driver is configured
for the FAT
(File Allocation Table) or HPFS (high performance file system) formats.
FAT format is the standard 8.3 (DOS) file name space. However, it differs
from the list of Windows ‘95 unsupported characters. The following characters
are not supported in OS/2 8.3 format: “ / \ : * ? | < > + , ; =
[ ] .
Also, in case you were by coincidence thinking of using the following for filenames,
they are unusable: KBD$ , PRN, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, CLOCK$, LPT1, LPT2,
LPT3, CON, SCREEN$, POINTER$, and MOUSE$.
HPFS format uses up to 254 characters (vs Windows 95 with 255), and may contain any number of periods. All the unsupported characters listed for the FAT format are also unsupported in HPFS. Extended file attributes in HPFS will not appear if files are copied to floppy disk, until they are recopied to an HPFS-formatted hard drive.
DOS applications may not preserve the extended attributes(i.e. long file names) of HPFS!
eol character:
Macintosh:
Macintosh recognizes file names up to 31 characters, no apparent restriction on character types. Just be aware that if transferring to Windows ‘95 file system, the above-listed restrictions apply to Mac file names also (i.e. unsupported characters). When backing up VAX files to a Mac file server, the trailing ; and version number get truncated.
eol character: (CR).
UNIX
eol character:(LF)
VAX:
VAX filenames on Cwolf may be up to 39 characters in length, followed by a period and up to another 39 characters. The only three supported non-letter characters are $ , - , and _ .
If backing up files to Windows ‘95 derived from cwolf via FTP, mail, etc, it will be necessary to eliminate the trailing semicolon, and - if you want to save the version number- move that into the first six characters of the filename.
eol character:
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Last updated January 27, 2005