Re: [h-e-w] Niggling file problems

[Richard M. Heiberger]

This reminds me of an annoying characterstic on W2000.
Is there an emacs way around this.

When I have a mixed case filename that fits within the 8.3 framework,
for example, MyFile.el, it gets copied to floppy disks as MYFILE.EL,
entirely upper case.  As best as I can tell, this is due to a design
decision in W2000 that is illustrated by opening the Commands Prompt
window and entering  dir/x

D:\Apps\emacs\emacs-21.1>dir/x
 Volume in drive D is APPS
 Volume Serial Number is C0C1-3AB6

 Directory of D:\Apps\emacs\emacs-21.1

10/26/2001  12:00p      <DIR>                          .
10/26/2001  12:00p      <DIR>                          ..
10/22/2001  08:13a      <DIR>                          bin
12/22/2000  06:56a               1,042                 BUGS
10/22/2001  08:13a      <DIR>                          etc
10/20/2001  11:51a      <DIR>                          info
10/22/2001  08:10a      <DIR>                          lisp
10/20/2001  11:51a      <DIR>                          lock
10/20/2001  11:51a               4,046                 README
10/05/2001  04:22a               8,752                 README.W32
02/01/2002  01:52p      <DIR>          SITE-L~1        site-lisp

Note that names that are too long for 8.3 have an abbreviated 8.3
name.  For these files, copying them to floppy retains both the
long and short names.

Files that have names short enough to fit in the 8.3 mold do not have
any values in the short name column.  When these names are copied to
floppy, they appear in upper case only.

This characteristic is new to W2000 (I don't know about NT).  Both names
exist on W95 and W98.

Can the emacs internal file writing routines create valid 8.3 names in\
the first column for situations where Windows doesn't do it for us.
Then with both names present, I assume that both names would be copied
to floppy and the mixed-case name would be retained.

My current workaround, which I sometimes forget to do, is to gzip or
tar the files first.  Then when I gunzip or tar to restore the correctly
cased name is used.

Rich