Changes

The next part to understand is outlines how these filing systems work. PC-DOS introduced a very clever naming systems for files. They created the 8.3 system. Each file would have 8 letters of a name, a full stop, then three letters to denote the type of file it is.

Imagine a file. It , it has no extension, so how do you know which program to use. ? Well the The computer would have to open the file and read the data to figure out what type it is. This is exactly how the original Macs did it. They had to read the data (admittedly the first few letters inside the file), to figure out which program to use. 8.3 saved a ton of time.

8.3 also meant limitations. 8.3 had and restrictions. When using dos, commands are separated by spaces, because that is how humans read:

The second command "directory listing" put on screen a complete lisiting listing of all the files in the directory. The * means list everything that matches.

So we can see that there are now some reserved characters. * meaning all. space separating commands and this first introduction of a \. We'll come to this last one in a minutebit later.

We also have a limitation of file names being rather short. 8 characters doesn't leave much room for discussion. So the system was able to handle two files of long length by cutting them back to six characters and then using ~ (called tilda) and a number. So if we had:

* My Really Interating Intersting Other file.doc

As time passed , the filing system has moved on and now spaces . Spaces in names are common place, extensions are four or five letters sometimesometimes, etc. This is because the newer filing systems can support them , BUT, beneath it all, the filing system still supports 8.3 limitiations limitations and has "work aroundsworkarounds" to hide these from the user.