On 2008-09-30, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

Ouch -- spaces in the file names, so they will be replaced by
the system with underscores '_' to avoid problems with some systems.
Spaces embedded in filenames are *evil*. Even a problem to some
business versions of Windows -- which started the fad. :-)


Commodore allowed spaces in file names, long before Windows did.

MS-DOS's COMMAND.COM could not handle embedded spaces in the
file names.

However, the BASIC interpreter, descended from the Altair Disk
Basic (also from Microsoft) bypassed the OS's high-level disk routines,
and could create files with embedded spaces in the names. I discovered
this in a MS-DOS 2.? system which included a "typing tutor" program.
That program created files with embedded spaces in the names (to record
the progress of a "student"), and the only way that I could get rid of
it was to go into BASIC, and type the command in BASIC to remove a disk
file (I forget what the syntax was, but it was in the manual). *That*
got rid of it. The normal unix tricks (enclosing the filename in single
quotes or double quotes did not work, and the unix trick of preceding
the space with a '\' *could* not work because MS-DOS used '\' as a
subdirectory separator.

I later encountered a similar problem in another system which
included a Microsoft BASIC (a computerized spectrophotometer FWIW), but
did not include MS-DOS as the OS). However that version of the BASIC
did not have the command to delete a file, so I was stuck by the files
created by someone else.

It wasn't until Windows that the command line allowed
referencing files with embedded spaces in their names on Microsoft
systems. And -- they are regretting allowing that for their business
systems and servers, where scripts (.BAT files or the like) tend to
break when they encounter spaces in filenames.

I've never used a disk-based Commodore, so I don't know how the
command line handled embedded spaces in filenames. It may be that the
design of the command line allowed only on e filename per command, so it
could just keep reading until the end of the command line and treat it
all as a single filename. If not -- how did you specify on the command
line (not to be confused with referencing from within BASIC) a file with
embedded spaces. Or was it like the Altiar Disk BASIC, where the BASIC
*was* all of the OS that existed, so you had to reference files purely
from within BASIC commands?

Enjoy,
DoN.

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