"DoN. Nichols" wrote:
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?
The Disk OS was in ROM, so there was no equivalent to command.com.
The filenames were up to 16 characters, and could have a space anywhere
you wanted. I used to put a menu on a disk, with two leading spaces and
a couple utilities with a single space so that when the directory was
sorted, the menu was always the first item. If you held the 'Commodore'
key and pressed the 'run' key it loaded and ran the first program on the
disk. BTW, Microsoft was involved in the ROM based OS. The commodores
would only hold one basic program at a time, but there was a small area
of protected RAM where small machine language programs could be run with
a 'poke' command.
I still have the books detailing the ROM based OS for the 1541 drives.
In fact, I had multiple copies, from friends who moved on to programing
newer computers. One was called 'Inside the 1541', but I can't remember
the other title and I don't want to go out to the shop at one AM to
look.
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