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invictius

Has there been any talk of easing the 8.3 filename limit on idgames?

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I was told this has been asked before but I couldn't find any previous topic in a search. How long until we run out of all possible filename combinations?

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Is there really such a limitation? I've never noticed. Even if there is (assuming that names are case-insensitive and thus no distinction is made between e.g. Foo.WAD and FOO.WAD), just with the combinations of 26 letters, 10 numbers and let's say a bunch of 10 different punctuation/special characters ($, !, _ , etc.) you get a whooping 46^8 = 20,047,612,231,936 possible combinations of 8 characters (granted, not all of them make sense or are pleasing to the eye).

In addition, there's a categorization in directories (e.g. boom, doom, doom2, combos, source ports, sounds, graphics etc.) which further multiplies that number.

Is this something enforced (e.g. new submissions MUST have a WAD/ZIP filename limited to 8 characters, case insensitive) or simply a tradition carried over by the MS-DOS days? For example, such a limitation makes absolutely no sense for modern source ports, which don't even have or ever had a DOS version.

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README.INCOMING">

We lowercase all the filenames and we'll make it unique if there's something in the archive with the same name in the same area. If you upload a file with a long filename it'll be REJECTed. There are people who can't handle long names out there, and we've grown tired of figuring out how to retitle your files. Eight characters maximum in the filename, folks, and they have to be letters, numbers, underscores or dashes. No spaces.

Also:

All files must be ZIPped and have a same-named .TXT file uploaded with the ZIP, as well as a copy of the same .TXT inside of the ZIP.

So it's not even an 8.3 limit, but an 8.zip limit. Excluding the textfile, no naming rules are being enforced for any files inside the zips, though.

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Yeah, I think it's due time that the limit be raised, as well as allow unicode names. They MUST work on Windows and Mac however: no colons or wildcard characters allowed.

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The DOS filename restriction was/is in place because DOS can still be used to launch WADs. Mind you, that's quite a limited edge case now so the requirement is quite suspect.

ASCII restricted names however should still be enforced as some ports, even modern, do not support Unicode, and people still need to type filenames in command lines.

scifista42 said:

Also:
So it's not even an 8.3 limit, but an 8.zip limit. Excluding the textfile, no naming rules are being enforced for any files inside the zips, though.

I seem to recall there was, but sure enough can't find any specific rule for it. However mismatching the wad name from the zip will prevent Getwad (and likely other automated tools) from properly finding the intended wad to download.

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Edward850 said:

The DOS filename restriction was/is in place because DOS can still be used to launch WADs. Mind you, that's quite a limited edge case now so the requirement is quite suspect.

Do not forget about vanilla Doom running from DOSBox! I still use that instead of Chocolate-Doom.

ASCII restricted names however should still be enforced as some ports, even modern, do not support Unicode, and people still need to type filenames in command lines.

That's solely because they were unaware that Windows handles unicode differently than other OS. If it gets fixed, we will be fine with supporting different languages.

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Ty once accepted a version of Eternity I uploaded with LFNs based on a discussion we had where I pointed out how difficult it was to unambiguously and descriptively name the binaries, source, and other zips with an 8 char limit. I think that version was replaced with a newer one in which I managed to cram all the needed info into 8 chars later, though, so it's not there any longer.

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greenfish.wad exceeds the 8.3 limit. Ironically I think it's a lot more stringently enforced now than it was back in the Win9x days when it was still vaguely relevant.

You could make an argument that it should be kept for eg. Vanilla and Boom-compatible WADs but not for anything that you can only run on a modern OS anyway. People do build retro gaming DOS machines after all. Probably it's just entirely unnecessary though.

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Honestly, I think that those people who go all the length to set up DOS to play Doom are a lot more knowledgeable so the naming shouldn't be a problem for them.

Which makes me wonder: Shouldn't DosBox support Win95's long file name extensions? It's a bit strange that trying to access a mounted directory with it can result in such a hassle because all names got mangled.

Ultimately, what we have here is a limitation for the benefit of a small subgroup of users and completely forgetting that for the vast majority these cryptic file names pose more of a problem than an asset.

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Why does DosBox even has mount? Would there be some problem with just letting it access everything from the start?

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The "limit" does not exist for the sake of DOS. DOS can handle longer filenames just fine so long as you're willing to type doom2.exe -file mylong~1.wad or whatever.

From what I remember, the "real" limitation was the ISO 9660 CD-ROM file system, which dates back to *1986*. Because one of the original purposes of the archive was to sell CDROM copies (remember cdrom.com??), it *had* to stick to this format. Of course, from looking at the format, it was not even necessarily a hard and fast rule that filenames had to stick to 8.3, but whatever.

And for what it's worth, ISO 9660 was amended in 2013 with many changes including longer file names, so whatever original rationale there was is not even up to date now.

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Graf Zahl said:

Which makes me wonder: Shouldn't DosBox support Win95's long file name extensions? It's a bit strange that trying to access a mounted directory with it can result in such a hassle because all names got mangled.

Because DOSbox is intended for running DOS games. Those don't need LFN support.

Linguica said:

From what I remember, the "real" limitation was the ISO 9660 CD-ROM file system, which dates back to *1986*. Because one of the original purposes of the archive was to sell CDROM copies (remember cdrom.com??), it *had* to stick to this format. Of course, from looking at the format, it was not even necessarily a hard and fast rule that filenames had to stick to 8.3, but whatever.

While many CD authoring softwares at the time allowed 30 chars case sensitive indeed, I remember many DOS drivers refused to read files with such names. Thus, such file names were avoided in DOS.
Long, case sensitive file names would have been a good copy protection in times before CD burners became commonplace in home PCs. They must have been realized that it just didn't work on the majority of DOS PCs.


Today, we have UDF, which makes such restrictions obsolete indeed.
I agree, that keeping that limit for Vanilla WADs makes sense. But ditch it for any WAD or tool meant to be played on a modern OS.

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LogicDeLuxe said:

Because DOSbox is intended for running DOS games. Those don't need LFN support.


Correct. But the file systems that get mounted occasionally do, and then traversing directories inside DosBox is, to put it mildly, very, very uncomfortable.

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Graf Zahl said:

Honestly, I think that those people who go all the length to set up DOS to play Doom are a lot more knowledgeable so the naming shouldn't be a problem for them.

Yeah, I pretty much agree I think. The CDROM argument is certainly enlightening, but if that's the reason then it's pointless nowadays.

I will say that I think keeping some limitations on filenames is a good thing. For example, allowing filenames with spaces in them or that are 200 characters long could be annoying. Increasing the limit and restricting to a limited set of characters would seem like a reasonable thing to do.

Graf Zahl said:

Which makes me wonder: Shouldn't DosBox support Win95's long file name extensions? It's a bit strange that trying to access a mounted directory with it can result in such a hassle because all names got mangled.

Well, how would this work? The purpose of DOSbox is to run DOS programs, most of which don't support long filenames. The only DOS programs I remember possibly having support for LFNs were DJGPP, and maybe MS-DOS Editor? (I forget). In general LFNs were a Windows feature, and those filenames got mapped to 8.3 names for any DOS programs. It's an assumption baked into pretty much every DOS binary.

Traversing directories more easily is maybe a good argument, but I'd possibly argue that it's better to have a consistent shell where the paths you see match those supported by the programs you're running. If I can't really type "doom2 -file c:\long file name\foo.wad" and have it work then it seems self-defeating.

Memfis said:

Why does DosBox even has mount? Would there be some problem with just letting it access everything from the start?

At the very least you need mount so that you can mount image files (dumps of CDROMs / virtual HDDs / etc.).

For passthrough mounts that read from the local filesystem, you may kind of have a point. You can possibly make the argument that it's a security vulnerability - DOS games shouldn't need access to your entire hard drive.

On non-Windows systems it's a lot clearer that it doesn't make sense to mount the whole filesystem by default: suppose you mounted the filesystem root (/) as C:\ by default, most game installers that try to install to C:\GAMENAME (eg. C:\DOOM2) would fail, since / is not writable by a normal user.

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Partially on topic: 8 character limit does seem slightly archaic, but as a side note, I hate the current trend on Doom servers of having 12 wads with names like "ComplexDoom_SlightlyAlteredGunsToImproveBalance-v58547_ServerEditPatchVersion_v9878.wad"

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I find the limit frustrating. I keep finding wads in my folders that ive forgotten about and can no longer remember what they are, because the file name is "mcudmfG.wad"

I already renamed the stuff from idgames to remove the 8 character limit, so I know what each thing is, but it still only applies to folders. I like file names to be 100% clear what they are. Hate it when things cling to a redundant limitation that just cripples things

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