UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]

[Jerry Feldman]

The 14 character limit did exist in Unix versions 6 and 7. Version 6 was 
used as a basis for the BSD releases. Version 7 was the basis for what 
became System 3 followed by System V. Long file names I think came out for 
the first time in BSD 4.3 (or possibly 4.2). 
Unlike MS DOS, which had a limit of 8 for the file name and 3 for the 
extension, the file extension was (and is) a convention, and the dot (.) 
could appear anywhere in the 14 characters. Filenames beginning with a dot 
are uninteresting, and not generally displayed by ls.  
On 20 Aug 2002 at 16:20, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
>   The 14-character filename limit *did* exist in some early Unix or Unixes.  
> I do knot know exactly which ones, but it is an oft-cited limit when
> worrying about "greatest common factors" for heterogeneous systems.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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