long filenames

[utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!npois!houxi!houxs!hansen]

I've worked on two different systems which allowed considerably longer names
than the Unix system does (I was going to say 'than Unix does,' but I'm  now
told *Unix* is an adjective, not a  noun). After using them and losing them,
I find myself missing that feature tremendously.

Everytime I see  a  filename  like  mdep.c,  I  cringe.  Does that name mean
machine  dependent code.c, mother's favorite department stores.c, a  medical
program dealing with drugs given  in  epsilon  increments,  or WHAT? I CAN'T
tell from the *filename*!

If I use some of the subsystems in  common  use around here, such as SCCS or
pack/unpack,  I  can't even use all 14 characters for the  filenames.  These
programs  tack  on  their  own  prefix/suffix  and  now  limit  me to twelve
character names.

One comment about those systems: a person did have help from the system that
made  it much, MUCH easier to deal with the longer filenames. Such  features
as filename completion and  filename  prompting  were available at the shell
level. (Actually at the exec or monitor level, depending on that  particular
system's terminology). For  filename  completion,  we hit the escape key and
the  filename was completed out as far as possible. For filename  prompting,
we hit the question mark key and a list of possible filenames appeared.

I have seen neither of these  features in the standard Unix shell or cshell.
There are a number of home-grown "shells" floating around which have some of
these features, but, not being a  supported product, they tend to be used by
only  a few people or a couple of systems. Also, they tend to load down  the
system because they have to be run in raw mode (without any support from the
tty driver), generally two to three times the size of sh or csh, and usually
don't have enough people using  them  to  warrant having the shared-text bit
set.

I guess the things I'd like to see  added  to the Unix system are: 1) longer
file  names, say ~30 characters long; and 2) support for them at  the  shell
level, giving both filename completion and filename prompting.

					Tony Hansen
					houxs!hansen