wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu (Bill Wolfe) (01/19/90)
In the current issue of ACM SIGAda Ada Letters, there is an article by Y.E. Gail Wang (pages 111-117) which reports on a set of Ada components designed to provide filename portability between MS-DOS, Unix, and VMS. UNIVERSAL_FILE_NAMES was developed under a STARS contract, and provides Ada filename portability such that it is unnecessary to change filenames or filename paths when porting software among the above-listed operating systems. The UFN system, 1100 lines of Ada code, is itself directly portable among all of these operating systems -- it does not require the support of any sort of non-portable operating system interface. The universal file/path naming allows programmers to use up to 79 characters in each file or directory name, regardless of the number of filename characters actually supported by the underlying file system. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu