On Friday, Dec 5, 2003, at 16:59 US/Pacific, Matt Pobursky wrote:

>
> I can't believe MS actually got a patent based on long file names. They
> were implemented in *nix and Apple OS's long before MS ever implemented
> them.
>
No, no.  (at least, I don't think so.)  Microsoft presumably has patents
on ways that implement long file names in a manner that works with a
filesystem datastructure that only does 8+3 character names.  In a
backward
compatible manner so that systems that only support 8+3 can STILL access
the files with long names.  It's actually rather clever, and probably
deserves a patent.  But like I said, the patent should probably go to
EUNICE, which did something VERY similar back prior to DOS v1.

(Looks like FAT makes a special FIRST6~n.type with the long name stored
away in some comment field of the directory entry, while EUNICE used
a couple of files, one of which contained the long file names for
everything
that matched the 1st N characters.)

BillW

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