27 Mar
2016
27 Mar
'16
1:43 a.m.
On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 11:09 PM, Charles Anthony <
charles.unix.pro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
And Dec's RADIX-50, packing 3 characters into 16
bits. (IIRC the origin of
the 6.3 filenames. bit I can't document that.)
Sort of.... before ASCII, DEC used a few other 5 bit codes that were
around such as baudot (look at the PDP-1/4 etc and KSR 28). RAD50 was a
natural scheme for storing file name and using bits efficiently.
Which, of course, lead to the abomination of case folding - it's not a bug,
it's a feature 😂
RAD50 gave us the x.y file name form with the implied dot et al. 6.3 and
later 8.3 were natural directions from that coding. Using the .3 ext as a
type tag of course followed that naturally given that's all that was stored
in the disk "catalog." [And CP/M and PC/MS-DOS inherit that scheme -
including the case folding silliness even though by that time all keyboard
were upper and lower case and they stored the files in 8 bits].
UNIX of course, would put the "type" in the file itself (magic #) and force
the storing of the dot, but removed the strict mapping of name and type.
Having grown up in both systems, I see the value of each; but agree I think
I find UNIX's scheme better and lot more flexible.
What is funny is that Apple's OSX does it both ways which I find
schizophrenic and my major complaint with OSX (which is still my current
fave but that's another story).
Clem