On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 20:35:23 -0600, J44xm wrote:
[Different short and long filenames]
Thanks to all for your assistance. I guess what I was looking for isn't
possible, unfortunately. But I appreciate everyone's replies.
No. It is not impossible, but "not advisable". Lets have a look at the
basics, first:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/win95/long32us.mspx
| After network administrators have addressed all software incompatibility
| issues associated with long filenames, they should establish naming
| policies and conventions. Naming guidelines ensure consistency among
| filenames and aid file navigation and browsing.
[...]
| Establishing a naming convention is much like developing a company style
| guide.
[...]
| For example, in a magazine publishing environment, a network administrator
| could establish an 8-digit code to accompany all long filenames:
| 11_5MMED.SP - "Baseball Pennant Races Coming Down to the Wire This Season"
So, Microsoft concedes the possibility of totally different short and
long file names. But in the example above, they are talking about a
fictive file system upon a network. So lets have a look inside FAT32:
http://www.osdever.net/documents/LongFileName.pdf
(Not available at MS, anymore...)
| If a long name is renamed, the 8.3 name stored for it will by default be
| automatically recreated. The application will not be allowed to define,
| or independently change the short name that is automatically created.
Microsoft needed a mechanism to ensure the most accurate compatibility
for older applications not supporting LFN. Hence the fully automatic
way for the creation of short filenames from long ones.
Out the of the above, the question arises, whether short and long
filename theoretically *could* be different. And that is - in fact -
the case.
You can use LBack to test this:
http://people.freenet.de/herbert.reichardt/download.htm
- First boot into Win9x command line and store the long filenames of
a directory to a file using LBack. (Note: The source doesn't need to
be a drive, as the program help seems to imply.)
- Change some of the long filename entries inside the name backup file.
Because the long file names are stored as Unicode, you may need a hex
editor to do this.
- Ensure the deletion of all LFN entries for the test files. (For
instance by moving them to a FAT16 drive and back.)
- Use LBack to restore the long file names.
If you boot into Win9x or Win2k/XP, you'll find the files still
accessible, although long and short names are (maybe completely)
different. It has been mentioned, sometimes, that Win9x doesn't
recognize files, whenever the first letter of the short and the
long filename are different. I can't confirm this for Win98SE.
Everything works fine, here.
You may ask, whether this is a way to go to solve your problem.
I wouldn't advise you to do that. Any file operation which writes
the filename (for instance each copy to a new directory or to
another drives) ignores the short filename and creates a new one
right from the long filename. So all efforts invested would be
lost. And there still is the possibility that the difference
between both names results in unexpected system behavior.
BeAr
