[Webfunds-users] Re: mac 31 char filenames

Ian Grigg iang@systemics.com
Fri Sep 10 12:16:57 1999


<someone> asked:
> Hmm, the webfunds.org website says that 1.3.7 contains a "potential untested
> fix" for the filename length problem.  I take it it does not work after all?

We never heard that it didn't work, it's just
that it was applied to one area only, and the
new area I've discovered - contracts - is a bit
more complex, as just looking for a short name
file won't work.

This is a substantially annoying problem, as one
of the foundations of the whole architecture is
the message digest.  We use SHA1, which when
expressed in ascii as hex is 40 characters long.

There is an alternate way that stores it in 27 chars,
but that doesn't fix the contracts as there, we need
another 4 characters, so we are back to 31.  Hmm, it
might work with care though.  I'll have to try that,
but it is substantial coding, and it breaks many things.

iang