1. [jbrown105 at jbrown.mylinuxbox.org: Re: DOS LFN support]
----- Forwarded message from "Jim C. Brown" <jbrown105 at jbrown.mylinuxbox.org>
-----
From: "Jim C. Brown" <jbrown105 at jbrown.mylinuxbox.org>
Subject: Re: DOS LFN support
On 0, Juergen Luethje <jluethje at gmx.de> wrote:
> >
> > If you can create a .e file with full support for long filenames,
> > and if people can confirm that it works with all flavors of DOS,
> > I can move the code into the interpreter.
> <snip>
>
> I'd be glad if it could be done this way, and I will do my best to
> create a .e file with full support for long filenames as soon as
> possible. I'll also add a draft of a report programm, that writes
> the OS and the results of some tests to a plain text file, that people
> can send to you by e-mail.
>
> I myself have the possibility to test on
> - plain MS-DOS 6.22 (no LFN)
> - plain MS-DOS 7.1 (no LFN)
> - MS-DOS 7.1 & Win 98/1st ed. (LFN)
> - MS-DOS ? & Win 2000 (LFN)
>
> Regards,
> Juergen
>
There is a TSR program avaliable for DOS 4 and above which gives support for
LFN. I'm not sure if I still have the program on my disk, if I can find it
(locally or on the net again) I'll send it to Juergen so he can test that out
as well to see if it works (the TSR gives Win95 LFN under olders versions of
MS-DOS).
jbrown
P.S. I got rid of most of my DOS stuff after I became a Linux freak :),
I'll try to help out in this expetiture tho (hey, without a Disk Operating
System, where would we be? :)
----- End forwarded message -----
2. [jbrown105 at jbrown.mylinuxbox.org: Re: DOS LFN support]
----- Forwarded message from "Jim C. Brown" <jbrown105 at jbrown.mylinuxbox.org>
-----
From: "Jim C. Brown" <jbrown105 at jbrown.mylinuxbox.org>
Subject: Re: DOS LFN support
On 0, Juergen Luethje <jluethje at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> jbrown105 wrote:
>
> > On 0, Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> wrote:
> >> Juergen Luethje writes:
>
> <snip>
> >>> Together with J.Brown, I began to work at a cross-platform library for
> >>> directory and file operations some time ago. Unfortunately, it doesn't
> >>> make much progress at the moment, because I have little time, but it
> >>> shouldn't be too much work to extract the functions related to long
> >>> filenames, and rearrange them somewhat.
> >
> > Uhh ... didnt dos.e already do this?
>
> I would appreciate it very much, if in *all* Euphoria routines that deal
> with filenames, ex.exe uses long filenames, if they are supported by the
> OS. The code needed for this purpose is *not* contained in dos.e.
> Most of the code in dos.e add new functions to Euphoria (like mkdir(),
> rmdir(), copy(), ...) rather than improving existing functions.
>
Ah I see. I do believe our lib adds these as well, but on the other hand
this is not what you're trying to extract (from our lib).
> (I assume Rob knows dos.e well. If dos.e would solve the problem, Rob
> would already have moved it's code into the interpreter, I suppose.)
>
> And dos.e is buggy. Just an example: When a DOS program deals with long
> filenames, the most basic thing is to detect, wether the OS on which the
> program currently is running, does support long filenames or doesn't do
> so. Do detect this, dos.e uses "surrogate markers", which are not too
> reliable. Using this method, a program wouldn't have long filename
> support on Win XP. 
> To look wether LFN are supported by the OS, my code calls the appropriate
> DOS interrupt function instead, which is much more reliable.
>
Ah I see. Just curious, what is a "surrogate marker" ?
> > In fact, Juergen, didnt you get most of the dos code FROM dos.e?
>
> No. When I saw some bugs in dos.e, I reported them to this list. Then
> Derek wrote something like: "Interesting, but who uses DOS nowadays?".
> That was how I got the idea, not just to correct dos.e, but to create a
> cross-platform library for file and directory operations. You know that,
> of course.
> So the first thing I got from dos.e -- and from Derek 
-- was a
> (hopefully) good idea. Then I got more ideas from dos.e, but I already
> had detected, that the code wasn't reliable. I found a very good
> documentation on the net about DOS and LFN [1]. But mainly I used Ralph
> Brown's interrupt list, what to the best of my knowledge is the "gold
> standard" is this field.
> (There are situations, were I like "wearing a belt *and* braces"
In that case, your work on the lib becomes even more impressive.
>
> > Not to say that our lib isn't useful (personally I think it should be
> > part of the standard includes,
>
> I also think so. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
>
> > but then again thats just my opinion) but that wouldnt it be easier
> > to get dos.e from the archives than to extract the DOS-only code from
> > file2.e? (I wouldn't know, I've mostly done the Unix-only part of the
> > programming on it.)
>
> I'm already finished extracting the DOS code related to long filenames
> from file2.e. I also made some tests on my neighbour's PC (Win 2000).
>
Oh! Excellent!
> > About file2.e: I'm working on some more Linux improvements, I'll give
> > Juergen a copy in a few days perhaps.
> <snip>
>
> You're welcome! Just please be patient with me, because my lack of time.
>
> > jbrown
>
> Regards,
> Juergen
>
> --------
> [1] http://lab1.de/prod/lfn/lfn.htm (sorry, it's in German only)
>
Doesnt Altavista have an option to translate web pages in other languages?
(Called Babel Fish, I think...)
----- End forwarded message -----
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