On 5 Jun 99, at 15:14, Gerardo Medrano wrote:

> What exactly, is the problem that Xcopy cause? Could you, please
> elaborate?

  Under Win32, a file that has a "long" name -- more than the 8.3 supported
by DOS -- has a generated "short" 8.3 name as well.  If everything you run
uses the long names, you never need to worry about this.

  But when a Win32 XCOPY copies a file from one place to another, the long
name is copied but the short name is *generated* again -- and *could* come
out different on the destination than it was on the source.  Any references
to the file by its short name will not properly track to the copy.

  For most people, the cases where a different short name would get generated
are probably fairly rare.  For others, though, they can be exteremely common;
if these people also use short names to refer to files, XCOPY can be a
disaster.

  [In theory, the only time you should really ahve to refer to files by short
names is when using DOS/Win16 software.  In practice, some Win32 applications
have been ported from DOS/Win16 without fixing this limitation, or may
otherwise contain bugs that can be avoided by using short names.  Beginners
can get by without them, but I would recommend that an intermediate/advanced
user of Windows 95/98/NT ought to be aware of them, and is likely to
encounter them sooner or later.]



David G

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