

How long filenames were added in Windows 95 to be backward compatible - wayne
http://home.teleport.com/~brainy/lfn.htm

======
aninteger
I 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
> 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
Yes, 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.

------
wayne
If you found that interesting, here's Raymond Chen's addendum to the above
article:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/08/26/10200...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/08/26/10200583.aspx)

(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.)

------
kingkawn
I 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.

------
ethank
Speaking 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
<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
I 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
lol "Those were the days"

------
whatgoodisaroad
In the first table of the "Storage Utilization" section, I believe the word
"byte" is being used where the author means "bit".

------
DiabloD3
Ahh, the wonders of trying to list everything in C:\Program Files, and getting
several indistinguishable MICROS~1.

~~~
zura
Actually, they would be MICROS~1, MICROS~2, MICROS~3 and so on...

------
pointyhat
The 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).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/aa365247\(v=vs.85\).aspx#maxpath)

~~~
gcv
Indeed! Try writing a Windows file system driver sometime; I hear it's truly a
lovely experience.

The other irony is that the HP48 graphing calculator, originally introduced in
1990, had a user-facing filesystem with full support for long file and
directory names. I'd be curious to learn what possessed the people responsible
for DOS to have ever shipped a system with the insane 8.3 restriction. Even
ancient Unix filesystems (early 1970s vintage) supported far more reasonable
14-character filenames.

~~~
rbanffy
> I'd be curious to learn what possessed the people responsible for DOS to
> have ever shipped a system with the insane 8.3 restriction

CP/M inspired them. PC-DOS (Q-DOS, really) was more or less a rip-off of DR's
CP/M-80. It's possible to give "ease of porting CP/M-80 programs to PC-DOS" as
an excuse for that.

At that time, short file names were not a big issue, as CP/M filesystems were
rather small (5- _megabyte_ hard disks were _very_ expensive at the time) and
hierarchical filesystems were outside the realm of microcomputers. PC-DOS
didn't introduce directories until version 2.

BTW, the Apple II DOS (all versions) had filenames of up to (IIRC) 33 chars,
case-sensitive and with one byte to indicate the file type with a flat
hierarchy. ProDOS has 16-char filenames with a hierarchical structure.

