Re: Msdos patch for aliased names
Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 15:06:26 -0700 (PDT)
On Mon, 28 Jul 1997 alknaff@innet.lu wrote:
>
> In order to avoid these problems, the filenames are not transformed
> into "canonic" filenames, which allow only one representation per
> valid MSDOS directory entry. Unfortunately, the name_translate_char
> mechanism was not enough for that, because canonizing an MSDOS
> filename may change its length (if for instance the basename was
> longer than 8 characters, but also when using names without extension,
> which can be represented with or without a trailing dot).
I don't want to apply this patch because it slows down a critical path.
Instead, could we maybe just simplify the canonicalization of msdos
filenames? Simplify it enough that name_translate_char() would be
sufficient? The rules would be:
- no suffix -> no dot
- basename > 8 characters -> can't happen
- forget about hidden files and the prepending '.'
None of the above rules are very fascistic - they'd simplify things a lot,
and I think the old logic is too complex to be really worth maintaining.
Linus