Introduction to Data Communications
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If you are going to use Unix with other systems such as DOS, make sure that you follow a file naming convention that is compatible with both systems. It is possible that characters that are allowed in one system may not be allowed or reserved in the other system.

DOS only allows 8 characters followed by a 3 character extension while Unix allows up to 255 characters. When transferring from DOS to Unix there is no problem. But when transferring from Unix to DOS, the Unix filename becomes truncated and converted to the 8.3 format.

Ex. Unix: "this_file_is_ver01_of_pkzip" becomes "this_fil.e_i" in the DOS world.

Wild Cards

Unix allows wild card characters in the file names similar to DOS. The Wild cards allowed are the asterick "*" and the question mark "?".

For example:

ls *xt 	will list all files ending with xt regardless of filename length.Such as:



cat_text  readme.txt



ls ?xt 	will only list 3 character long filenames that end with xt. Such as:



txt  cxt

Introduction to Data Communications
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