nemesis wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
>>> At what point was that? Even MS-DOS let you have extensionless files.
>>
>> Heck, CP/M let you have extensionless files. :-)
> 
> yes, for old systems like Unix and all, extensions are just part of the 
> name, nothing special.

That's the same on Windows, Unix, and CP/M.  The only difference is how 
the command line and/or libraries parse the names.

CP/M had 11-digit names. Most command-line utilities interpreted a dot 
as "fill with spaces to the 8th character", and a "*" as "fill with 
question marks to either the 8th or 11th character, whichever comes 
first."  Basically.  There certainly wasn't any "." or 8.3 on the disk.

Windows just stores the dot, at least on NTFS volumes. FAT volumes still 
have the 11-character limitation (which is where you get 11-character 
volume names) until you get the "extended names" (which are encoded 
names stored in directory entries marked as "deleted").

UNIX original (as in v7) had 14-character names, because they had 
16-character slots in directories with 2-byte inode numbers.

Nowadays, it's all pretty opened up. But there's nothing that enforces 
anything in Windows to use particular extensions for particular types of 
files, except maybe executable EXE and DLL files. (Not even sure about 
that.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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