Path length limits

Guilty as charged, apparently

If it’s a path passed around by a wimp message 256 is plenty.

So they invented a new single file format in 1995 and then decided that 10 characters are enough for anybody.

Filenames were ten characters on all Acorn roms, Impression was obeying the filename rules at the time.

What we must remember is that the ten character filename limit became a problem at the same time as machines started having more than 20MB of RAM (a bug that had to be fixed was that large documents and RAM>20MB causes Publisher to crash), the StrongARM processor appeared (non-von Neumann – a bigger change than 32 bit) and many more machines with hard discs appeared (remember floppies?). CC solved all of these apart from the 10 char filename limit but retired from the market in December 1996 having made their money on a DTP that would run in a 1MB machine.

Richard Keefe has extended the filename limit to 14 which should satisfy nearly everyone.

Richard Keefe has extended the filename limit to 14 which should satisfy nearly everyone.

Which still leaves a nesting depth of 16 with a 240 character path length limit – which again should satisfy nearly anyone (sane).

Chris, respectfully I must disagree with every single one of your points. ;-)

as machines started having more than 20MB of RAM (a bug that had to be fixed was that large documents and RAM>20MB causes Publisher to crash),

That will depend on whether you see an address as an address, or as an address and a place to stuff flags and other data. If the latter, then you’re going to run into trouble if you need more bits for larger addresses.

(non-von Neumann – a bigger change than 32 bit)

Somehow I doubt it… unless you really really like self modifying code.

and many more machines with hard discs appeared

Is this relevant? No Acorn released FileCore FSs supported more than 10 character filenames.

having made their money on a DTP that would run in a 1MB machine.

Not impressed. I used Ovation (written in C) for years on a 1MB floppy only A3000…

Richard Keefe has extended the filename limit to 14 which should satisfy nearly everyone.

Really? Just last night I used my printer to scan to a PDF that I called “timesheet_scans_2016.pdf”. If we’re looking for an arbitrary reasonable length for filenames, somewhere around 64-128 bytes should suffice in most cases except for those suffering verbal diarrhoea.

Really? Just last night I used my printer to scan to a PDF that I called “timesheet_scans_2016.pdf”. If we’re looking for an arbitrary reasonable length for filenames, somewhere around 64-128 bytes should suffice in most cases except for those suffering verbal diarrhoea.

I have to say I agree with you Rick as I tend to keep names relatively short but explanatory.¹
So to describe an install process for a particular software set I might use:
InstallingRO5.23HighVector
InstallingRO5.23LowVector

which at 25 and 26 characters show the need for a longer name, yes they could be cut to 15 characters:

InstallRO5.23HV
InstallRO5.23LV

but it’s starting to get a bit cryptic.
As long as we avoid the MS Word default of using everything up to the first punctuation on the opening page but not ending at a space. (thus “An-obvious-filename” becomes “An” and “A typical stupidly long filename produced by MS Word in a really irritating way that even breaks various aspects of Windows because of the spaces” becomes exactly that.)

¹ Server names at work tend to give a clue what they are for within about a dozen characters. Won that argument about 2 decades ago.

What we must remember is that the ten character filename limit became a problem at the same time as machines started having more than 20MB of RAM

I remember running into this problem trying to save a !Style document to a DOS floppy on my 4 MB A3000. No RISC OS version ever had a filename limit of 10 characters. It was just sloppy programming on CC’s part.

Filenames were ten characters on all Acorn roms, Impression was obeying the filename rules at the time.

And now we repeat altogether: Filecore is not RISC OS. Filecore does not set the filename rules. Filecore is not the only filing system on RISC OS.

Filecore is not the only filing system on RISC OS.

It’s not even the only “old” one! As noted earlier in the thread, NFS is available with OS 3.1 and supports >10 characters.

[Edit: Not sure where I was going with this; I’m only saying the same thing you already did]