File names are the identifiers used by the file system to uniquely identify files on a disk. All file systems have specific rules for constructing names of file objects. Different file systems can have different rules for naming file objects.
The OS/2 FAT file system supports the DOS naming conventions. The OS/2 High Performance File System (HPFS) supports a superset of the DOS naming conventions, allowing for long file names and characters illegal under DOS. Although different file systems can have different rules for naming file objects, all OS/2 file systems require that full path names consist of directory and file names separated by backslashes (\).
The OS/2 operating system views path names as ASCII strings and does not restrict file systems to the DOS file name format. Compatibility with existing DOS applications requires that all installable file systems support a superset of the 8.3 file name format used in the FAT file system.
The following topics are related to the information in this chapter: