Re: Moving Linux-specific stuff out of i386-tdep.c

[Kevin Buettner <kevinb at cygnus dot com>]

On Mar 8,  5:30pm, Chris Faylor wrote:

> I'm curious what the rationale for an 18 character limit might be.
> Even Windows allows more than that.

Here's what Stan had to say about the matter:

    Names need to be 8.3 unique so djgpp works.  The critical files
    would be only the ones that might actually get used in a djgpp
    system, so it's not crucial to have Linux native sources or HP
    tests cases be 8.3 unique, but it's simpler just to apply the rule
    uniformly.

    The 14-char thing is an old System V limitation, and is
    potentially more serious, but SysV would simply truncate names,
    and if that caused overlaps with other filenames, even the
    unpacking process would be a disaster.  However, there are
    probably very few systems left in the world, with that limitation,
    so I have been thinking that we could relax the limitation to,
    say, 18-char names, so if you add a ~ for backups, ls can still
    list files in four columns.  Weak rationale perhaps, but there's
    no other technical limitations, and so the criterion can be
    usability.

Kevin