Use a long file name in DOS

Yesterday, I saw on a forum on a website that someone asked me if I could use a long file name in pure DOS, and someone gave him an answer that was "impossible ". His answer is of course very wrong, but many people do not know how to use long file names in pure DOS. Now, I will introduce how to use long file names in DOS.

Both DOS and Windows are constantly evolving. The first operating system that supports long file names is Windows NT 3.5, followed by Windows 95. However, for some reason, MS does not add the long file name function to pure DOS. However, Microsoft does not provide LFN (long file name) application interface (API) in pure DOS, while DOS itself supports long file names. Many built-in commands in DOS7 and many new DOS software (such as the Popular DJGPP program) that have appeared in recent years, as long as the LFN interface already exists, you can directly operate LFN. Therefore, as long as an application can provide LFN interfaces in pure DOS, long file names in pure DOS can be implemented.

To achieve this goal, many people began to work hard. LFNDOS was the first to provide LFN APIs, so it is the most famous. However, since it has long stopped updating, there are many bugs and long Chinese file names are not supported. Fortunately, a Chinese person helped LFNDOS writers write a sub-function that supports long Chinese file names, so the latest version 1.07 already supports Chinese LFN. LFNDOS has many disadvantages, such as slow speed, memory occupation, and many problems, so it is not very practical. Therefore, someone decided to compile another LFN interface driver, which is DOSLFN. DOSLFN is made by a German and is still under development. Compared with LFNDOS, LFNDOS features fast speed, small memory usage, and Unicode support. Its latest version is 0.32o. With my help, its authors now fully support long Chinese file names, including long Chinese file names of GB2312, Big5, and even GBK character sets. Thanks to the above advantages, it becomes a very powerful and practical LFN interface driver, which can be downloaded from the "driver" on this site. Once you have a long file name interface, all the internal commands in MS-DOS 7.x, external commands, and PKUNZIP commands will automatically use the long file name, very convenient. Because of the practicability of the long file name function, "MS-DOS 7.10 complete installation version" has been automatically called long file name function, so that after the installation of DOS directly fully support the long file name in Chinese and English. Note that MS-DOS 6. x does not work because it is too old and does not support long file names.

In addition to the lfn api driver, there are other software that provides LFN support, such as LFNDIR, which can be used as a DIR Enhancement Tool to display long file names. However, LFNDIR is an old software and does not support FAT32 partitions and optical disks. Therefore, LFNDIR is not very practical. The most powerful and practical Odi's LFN tools (which can be downloaded from "file tools" on this site) include a set of long file name tools, such as LDIR, LCD, LRD, LDEL, etc. It is very convenient and stable. It fully supports long file names on FAT12/16/32 and optical disks. It can be used as a necessary tool for operating long file names in pure DOS. Another important thing is that although the MS-DOS itself does not have LFN support, it does not mean that all DOS is like this. ROM-DOS 7.10 supports long file names and FAT32 locally without any other program. In short, DOS really supports long file names.

Some old disk tools (such as NDD 8.0) do not support long file names because long file names are not available at the launch time. If used, long file names may be damaged. However, the new DOS software launched in recent years almost all support long file names, and some of them can directly use long file names as mentioned above, others are "Understanding" the existence of long file names without damaging them. Therefore, it is best to use these new DOS tools when using them so that they can coexist with long file names.