Long filenames (was: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?)

[Bruce G. Barnett]

In article <4439 at ficc.uu.net>, peter at ficc (Peter da Silva) writes:
>My method:
>	print {vaxA,sunB}/sa/i[nm]/Jan/*WEEK
>
>Disadvantages with your method:
>
>	You need lots of long file names.

So? What's the problem with that? I didn't see any smoke coming out of
the disk.

I said:
>> If I had to re-implement my report scheme on a system with filenames
>> less than 14 characters, it would have taken me twice as long to do it.
>
>Not at all. It would take you no longer...

and I said:

>> [14 characters] would have make the task more difficult, more complex, more
>> inflexible and more inefficient.
>
>Not at all.

I am amazed that you know *SO* much about my programs, and the conditions
I had to develop them under.

>hierarchical directories are a wonderful tool.

That's why most operating systems have them. The only systems I have
ever used that didn't have them were bootstrapped from paper tape.

I am tired and I'm afraid I am repeating myself, but it should be
obvious that if you have to write 50 scripts that are tightly
integrated, (I'm talking about reports used as data for reports that
are used in other reports. Summaries of summaries of summaries.)
and you change the database around (i.e. change the depth of the
directories, the locations of the files, the pattern used to match the
filenames, etc.), the scripts will break.

On the otherhand, if I wanted to add a "field" in the middle of a
filename, the regular expressions I use to "query" the database remain
the same.

Understand? I can change the database, and my scripts don't break.

And since I had to do this project in 1/10th the time I would prefer
to allocate, while my boss keep asking for reports that required
dozens of modifications to the "database", I believe I am more of an
authority of the effort required than you are.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have used the same mechanism
to organize the database.

Of course if I had to develop a portable, maintainable, and CPU
efficient package, I would have designed a completely different system.
But that's not what I am talking about, nor the point I am trying to make.

The point is, if you never had a system with long filenames,
you are never given an opportunity to discover how useful long
filenames can be.

--
Bruce G. Barnett	<barnett at crdgw1.ge.com>  a.k.a. <barnett@[192.35.44.4]>
			uunet!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett barnett at crdgw1.UUCP