> One of the first things I noticed about the directory when we started messin'
> around with Spectrum machines (1988) was that the account, group, user, and
> password names had been expanded to 16 characters.  That is to say, they were
> stored in the directory in spaces that had *room* for 16 characters, not that
16
> were actually allowed.  This led me to believe, at the time, that someday
these
> and file names would be no longer restricted to 8 characters.  D'ya
suppose that
> may have been a plan at one time?

At one time ASCII data structures were going to converted to UNICODE for
localization purposes, hence the need for 16-bytes rather than 8. The number
of characters would remain the same, but UNICODE encoding used 16-bit
characters.

Lee Courtney
Monterey Software Group Inc.

10420 S. DeAnza Blvd #C8
Cupertino, California USA 95014-3031
Voice:  408-253-1778    Fax: 408-253-1815
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]

www.editcorp.com/Businesses/MontereySoftware