8.3 Naming Convention: Why was it chosen?

But don't blame Microsoft-the 8.3 filename system was baggage carried over from the days of CP/M and Digital's RT-11 operating system.

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Search for that stuff! I gotta go.

http://www.techweb.com/winmag/library/1997/0201/ntent018.htm

The point of this is to search absolutely everywhere. He isn't limiting us to where we can find it, as long as its not form another class-mate. We're allowed to use others as help.

I've been searching for awhile now =[

I couldn't find anything. Jeez, you'd think it'd be easy

I've read theories about this, and usually discussions about this end up saying there's no real answer.

First one from http://www.mackido.com/Innovation/FileNames.html :
Because to do things (like copy a file), you had to type in the entire file name (and path name), people used lots of abbreviations and concatenation to reduce typing. This is why CP/M (DOS) used 8.3 (8 charaters + a 3 character suffix).

Second:
If you've come across with the name Gary Kildall during your research, count the letters in his name. This doesn't explain why it wasn't 7.4 though.

Third:
8.3, 8 + dot + 3 = 12 characters, compressed nicely with RAD50 into two words. However, CP/M does not compress filenames, and RAD50 was usually used to compress 6.3 or 9.3 filenames (some computers were 6-bit back then).

Fourth:
It comes from the 12 rows on an 80 column card. One row for each letter, plus the 12th row for a data clock (based on the stereotypical IBM 029 keypunch). A single column was punched in each row to mark the letter from the character set, yielding up to 80 choices per character.

Fifth:
There is evidence that Gary was one of those rare individuals with both DEC and IBM influences in his background. DEC had established the 3-character file extension as a standard on its systems, and IBM mainframes of the time had 8 characters as a common namespace size. Put the two together, and you get 8.3.

Sixth:
DEC's RT-11 used 8.3 filenames, and CP/M was developed using it as a guideline. This doesn't explain where RT-11 got 8.3 though.

Seventh:
Kildall chose 8.3 because he liked it.


So, which one do you choose?

Well, i gave him most of those and got:




So why did UNIX have it, with it being different all other OSes.

Some sound like you're just guessing. I consider only solutions, not guesses.

Another area to think about is the File Allocation Table, maybe that had something to do with it