Re: Msdos patch for aliased names

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
29 Jul 1997 00:56:11 GMT

Followup to: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970728150327.458B-100000@penguin.transmeta.com>
By author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> 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
>

There is some benefit, though, to using the same canonicalization
rules as MS-DOS itself, and MS-DOS' rules are *very* liberal. Maybe
the right thing to do is to allow name_translate_char() to shorten the
name (I don't know of any case where the name can actually grow in
length.)

As far as hidden files go, though, I agree completely. They should be
handled through a setflags/getflags interface (as should the ext2
flags.)

-hpa

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