4 ms·
How long filenames were added in Windows 95 to be backward compatible
- whatgoodisaroad 15y agoIn the first table of the "Storage Utilization" section, I believe the word "byte" is being used where the author means "bit".
- DiabloD3 15y agoAhh, the wonders of trying to list everything in C:\Program Files, and getting several indistinguishable MICROS~1.
- zura 15y agoActually, they would be MICROS~1, MICROS~2, MICROS~3 and so on...
- aninteger 15y agoI really love articles about programming from the 90s. Everything was written in C/C++ and maybe some Perl. Working with file formats that may or may not have had specifications, building and using algorithms that you learned in comp sci classes. I miss those days. :( It's so rare that web pages from the 90s still even exist on the internet. Sadly I have to do a lot of web surfing with the wayback machine as a proxy to the days of the past.
- tiles 15y ago> Sadly I have to do a lot of web surfing with the wayback machine as a proxy to the days of the past. I'd argue this is not sad, but incredible that the Wayback Machine has been so successful in preserving webpages as they've been revised, expanded, and deprecated. And if anything, it shows just how important the project and projects like it are for the preservation of the Internet's history.
- aninteger 15y agoYes, you're correct. The Wayback Machine is truly incredible. I meant that it is sad that the pages disappear and it is often impossible to contact the original author.
- pointyhat 15y agoThe irony of this is half of Windows is STILL utterly BROKEN with respect to path lengths since LFN was introduced in the Win32 API and it shoots you almost every day if you have to work with any deep directory hierarchies. There are so many rules it's unfunny: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx#maxpath http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247(v=vs.85).as...
- WayneDB 15y agoBroken is a point of view. Backwards compatibility is important to Microsoft.
- pointyhat 15y agoThey broke it on day one. Basically we are stuck with a bad decision. It's a Win32 subsystem specific problem. Both NT and NTFS do not have this issue internally. It's not backwards compatibility - it's just a turd.
- archangel_one 15y agoIt is backwards compatibility, because there are a fantastic number of programs out there that simply allocate a MAX_PATH sized buffer and assume that a single file path has to fit into it. If MS simply changed things so that paths of 500 characters could be returned all those programs would fail.
- rbanffy 15y ago> all those programs would fail. And, hopefully, be rewritten. Or, you could have a new set of API calls without this limitation. This new API could also receive a version argument, so that calls to its present version would return present-style data, even if the then-current implementation were much smarter. It's so obvious, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they already did it.
- 15y ago
- kingkawn 15y agoI had a windows xp machine that had very long file names on some pictures, and when the drive ran into some troubles the data specialists I took it to wanted to charge $2k because of the troubles those files were going to give them. Ahh my youth.
- wayne 15y agoIf you found that interesting, here's Raymond Chen's addendum to the above article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/08/26/10200583.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/08/26/10200... (I found the main link via Raymond's post and found it a lot more interesting, but Raymond's post is worth a read if you enjoyed the article.)
- ethank 15y agoSpeaking of this, did anyone on HN beta test Chicago (windows 95?) Early betas had the tendency to bork the LFN's which was a joy.
- 51Cards 15y ago<raises hand> Don't remember any file-system problems though I believe I got into the betas mid cycle. I do however remember well the "What the heck is a Start menu and where did Program Manager go?" Edit: I'm also starting to feel old when threads like this come up :)
- ethank 15y agoI started testing it when it still had the "Chicago" loading graphic. It's funny for me because I desperately wanted Microsoft to go after Apple on the UI elegance front, as I was a huge M$ booster at the time. What makes me feel old is that people take pre-emptive multitasking for granted. In my day we had cooperative multitasking AND LIKED IT.
- 51Cards 15y agolol "Those were the days"