On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 20:38:08 +0000 (+0000), Hugo Mills wrote:
> I'm no expert on this area, but if the 8.3 limit was truly a limit,
> you'd not be able to write those files to it. In practice, pretty much
> all FAT filesystems in the last 10 years or so have used the extension
> that allows arbitrary(*)-length mixed-case filenames. Even in that
> case, the system still writes a faked-up 8.3 filename as well, for
> things that don't understand the long filenames extension.
Although those long filename used to be stored in faked "deleted"
filenames - i.e. a 99 character filename uses something like 8 file
entries (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vfat#Long_file_names for all
the vomit inducing details). Gross hacks layed upon gross hacks...
Still there in FAT32.
So if reading the FAT slows teh more files in it, then long filename
would make it even slower. However I'd have hoped it was cached,
however writes may have a bit of a penalty.
Adrian
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