Re: System 6 & HFS Volumes

[dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <gardnern.758713654@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
gardnern@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (RKE) writes:
> dcrutch@coplex.coplex.com (Dan Crutcher) writes:
> 
> >platkus@iunet (Shawn Platkus) writes:
> >>RAM drive to HFS and played around with volume names, and sure enough, any
> >>volume with a / in it wouldn't let the application open a data file when that
> >>file was double clicked on in the finder. 
> 
> >Not too surprising, considering that "/" is a volume/directory delimiter 
> >in ProDOS. You will probably have trouble with ":" as well.
> 
> HFS uses ":" as it's file delimiter.  So you can't have a ":" in the file
> name anyway.

Not just HFS.  GS/OS uses colon as a file delimeter for ALL file
systems.  You can also optionally use slash (for compatibility with
ProDOS-16), but not if the filenames contain slashes.  You have to use
the same separator character throughout the pathname.


I've been making some progress on my experimentation with slashes in
volume names.  I have some bugs to iron out, but it appears that the
new MessageCenter message provided by Finder 6.0 (using GS/OS
pathnames with length word and colon separators) can handle slashes in
volume and/or file names.  I've managed to load a file into my ABOUT
program from an HFS disk called "The/Ram/Disk", with the file called
"This/Is/A/Long/File/Name", by double-clicking on it from Finder.


A related problem area will be older applications which use the
original Standard File calls.  These can only support filenames up to
16 characters (and a maximum pathname length of 128) and I think they
separate the full pathname using slashes.
-- 
David Empson                                                               
dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz                                                
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand