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TIL PDP-11 UNIX had an eight-character file/directory name limit https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/23917/origin-of-the-8-3-file-names-scheme ht

by Lammy 4y ago

TIL PDP-11 UNIX had an eight-character file/directory name limit https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/23917/origin-of-the-8-3-file-names-scheme https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/23917/ori...

kragen 4y ago
in 6th edition it was already 14 https://github.com/memnoth/unix-v6/blob/master/sys/ken/nami.c#L74 https://github.com/memnoth/unix-v6/blob/master/sys/ken/nami.... https://github.com/memnoth/unix-v6/blob/master/sys/param.h#L66 https://github.com/memnoth/unix-v6/blob/master/sys/param.h#L... i guess this 'edition zero' is from 01971, and 6th edition is 01975
- rahen 4y ago
  To be pedantic, V0 actually refers to the PDP-7 UNIX released in 1969. 1971 saw the port to the PDP-11/20, which was released as UNIX-11 and soon after, V1 UNIX.
  - fanf2 4y ago
    The edition numbers refer to the manual pages more than the software, which in the early days was under continual development running on approximately one machine. It wasn’t released in 1971.
    - kragen 4y ago
      or 01969, though it did exist
implements 4y ago
PDP-11 running RSTS/E had 6.3 filenames, and iirc no sub-directories (each user account (grouped by project) was a single directory). Remembering what “EDS023.DAT” was for could be a headache on large projects.