To do so SDL would have to interpret each host OS's handling of Long file names and if it were implemented it would have to be across all platforms.....

Also I found a bug in DosBox's handling of LFN:

In DosBox Hitman~2 is interepreted from "Hitman 2 silent Assassin" and Hitman~1 is from "Hitman Codename 47".

Whereas in Windows, Windows interprets Hitman~1 as "Hitman 2 Silent Assassin" and Hitman~2 as "Hitman - Codename 47"

This is because if you look at the folders in Windows Explorer and sort by "Name" Windows places "Hitman 2" before "Hitman - Codename 47" whereas DosBox does the opposite".

The above was for Windows XP. Haven't tested it with 9x/Linux yet.

that is not a bug.
just a difference.

Just don't use long filenames for directories that will be used by DOSBox. Don't do it. DOS didn't support long filenames, so even if DOSBox does it will still not work in a lot of games.

Okie Dokie

HunterZ wrote:

Just don't use long filenames for directories that will be used by DOSBox. Don't do it. DOS didn't support long filenames, so even if DOSBox does it will still not work in a lot of games.

I don't entirely agree. Since the DOSbox commandline interpreter isn't a real DOS program running on top of DOSbox, it is theretically perfectly capable of handling long filenames. In fact, DOSbox does handle long filenames, as it converts them to short ones (and it ignores any short names that Windows made up). What DOSbox could do, is allow long filenames to be used when typing in commands, and automatically convert them to short filenames, so that 'cd \program files' would result in 'c:\progra~1'. I don't really see that much use for it though, since you'd have to type more.

JAL

I can tell you. The use i see is that when i nav to a directory, i never know where the ~1 begins so i have to do a "dir" before i actually type cd\XXXXX. It may take longer to type it in but it would eliminate the need for the dir. I don't really count letters to see if progra~1 is 8 or if program~1 is 8. This would eliminate confusion there

This is purely the fault of the user then. You should ALWAYS
have one folder with legacy games/programs that is separated
from everything else. And this directory as well as all subdirs
should be 8.3 anyways as it's dos stuff only.

poo on you! You are right...but what's wrong with adding >8.3 support?

jal & GB86: As I was trying to explain, even if long filename support were added to DOSBox's command line, people would just start reporting problems with the actual games themselves that they then try to run from directories with long filenames.

gotcha

In DosBox Hitman~2 is interepreted from "Hitman 2 silent Assassin" and Hitman~1 is from "Hitman Codename 47".

Perhaps DIR command should report lfn beside dos names to help resolve ambiguities. no other changes; you'll still refer to lfn with the dos name

You should try the "TAB" key... DOSBox has completion built-in, no need to dir anything 😉

Though actually I agree, making DIR output as it is in the windows DOS shell would be nice.

"DOS didn't support long filenames"
WHAT????????

That is wrong. Many DOS systems did support long filenames.
I don't really know all dos versions of course, but DR-DOS did it for sure, and i think OpenDos does too(not sure).
Yes, the most popular MS-Dos did not support is, but that didn't even support fat32... no real dos user(who really liked dos) used MS-DOS...
i hate MS-DOS.... mainly because of all those "incorrect version" errors...
I could use older DR-dos programs in later versions too....
I could even use DR-DOS programs in MS-DOS...

Please DOS <> MS-DOS (<> = NOT EQUAL)

PS: Please don't ask me how to enable long filename support in DR-DOS... it was a long long time ago...

Support for long filenames is pointless. All DOS games are using 8.3 filenames.

I used MS-DOS all the way up to 6.x, then I used the DOS 7.0 that is part of Win95. I was able to work around the limitations just fine and never needed long filename support in pure DOS mode.

no real dos user(who really liked dos) used MS-DOS...

No real DOS user who really liked DOS uses long filenames...

DosFreak wrote:

In DosBox Hitman~2 is interepreted from "Hitman 2 silent Assassin" and Hitman~1 is from "Hitman Codename 47".

Whereas in Windows, Windows interprets Hitman~1 as "Hitman 2 Silent Assassin" and Hitman~2 as "Hitman - Codename 47"

This is because if you look at the folders in Windows Explorer and sort by "Name" Windows places "Hitman 2" before "Hitman - Codename 47" whereas DosBox does the opposite".

Windows doesn't create 8.3 names by alphabet. It creates them when the files/dirs are created and if an 8.3 name with an ~1 already exists and after that ~2 is used and so on. AFAIK a longe hex-number comes after ~9.

DosFreak wrote:

To do so SDL would have to interpret each host OS's handling of Long file names and if it were implemented it would have to be across all platforms.....

That's why DOSBox creates its own 8.3 names. Not every filesystem has 8.3-names, either.

LFN-support works only with programs that make use of the LFN-API like MS-DOS-Editor (since Win95), FreeDOS-Editor, MPXPLayer and copy, dir, del etc. (since Win95)
Other programs can't use it. And they are not prepared to work with longer filenames.

There's an open-source LFN-driver for DOS. If someone has the time to do it and wants to implement LFN support in DOSBox, he can use parts of the code to implement the API in DOSBox.
LFNDOS was originally programmed by Henrik Haftman, but Jason Hood maintains it at the moment.
DOSLFN (latest version by Jason Hood)

I think messing around with orignal-filenames is nonsense, because DOSBox has its own FS in a sandbox.

who was talking about games?????

i was a real dos user... never used MS-dos though...
always had log filenames...

Ridiculous,

No LFN for DosBox!

Thread closed.