File and Path name Lengths

From SpareMiNT Wiki

Old TOS filesystem supported 'short filenames', i.e. a directory entry representing a file or folder could have maximum 12 characters (8 for the filename, 1 for the dot, 3 for the extension, so called 8+3). The maximum length of a path name was 128 characters.

Modern filesystems may allow longer file and pathnames, for example, NEWFAT FS supports up to 255 characters for the filename and additional 259 character long pathnames. Under ext2.xfs the pathnames have 'unlimited' length, which means, that they're limited not by the filesystem driver, but by the DOS core inside the FreeMiNT kernel. This 'unlimited' limit is actually 1024 characters (1 kilobyte). UNICODE characters and blank spaces in filenames are also perfectly legal from the DOS point of view, although it is of course up to the filesystem driver code to allow or disallow them.

Nevertheless, programs written in pre-MultiTOS era, and some written after the MultiTOS has been revealed too, cannot cope with long filenames.

The FreeMiNT provides various forms of filename truncation mechanisms for such software, so that even very old programs could work on an XFS with long filenames. However, there are programs which completely refuse to run on an extended filesystem. Such software should be used on disks where long filenames are disabled (e.g. NEWFAT without VFAT).