Hello,

On older operating sys, there was only 6 or 8 chars, dot and extension (3char). Why such a number?

Example: Amiga, C64,...

example:

The directory structure used fixed size fields for file names. When those systems were written, storage was measured in kilobytes so it was not very limiting.

I don't know. I assume it was a limitation due to hardware imposed during early filesystem development and copied by others. Might of started with CP/M but do not know its exact origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename

Because when we started to try to make the PDP-11, ... operating systems to work, we had at that time no need to have specific long filenames.
We developed very simple assembly language programs. Purposes were slightly differents. It did not come in my mind even at that time that there was need of having long filenames.

Just as Gates et al thought that 640KB of RAM was overkill, and nobody would ever need that much.

Gill Arthur, Gary (who passed away quite young ), Gurley, Gilmore, W.G. Daly,... might have given valuable infos.

The practice actually dates back to operating systems and computers (which, uhh, I remember ...) like RSTS/E. Or the HP-2000 minicomputers, Data General, and so on. Days when paper tape was more common than hard drives.

(Yeah, you folks missed out on a helluva lot of fun times, by being born too late ... This stuff was "happening for the very first time, right before our eyes," and we were there and we knew it, although I think that very few of us realized what it would one day become nor how rapidly it would get there.)

The idea had been copied by other contemporary operating systems that were popular at that time, such as CP/M. Remember that the MS-DOS project was very much aimed directly at CP/M, because Gary Kildall was being an ass and would not negotiate with IBM Corporation, and IBM was running out of time.

One must remember that computers were extremely tiny. (As was the original IBM-PC.) They were not yet being used by "the general public." Specialists were accustomed to such limitations. It would have been wasteful to spare more precious disk-space and RAM on extravagance.

Yeah, we didn't have anything to work with. So, we did it anyway. Some of the things that we managed to accomplish, "basically, with nothing," are feats of High Hacking that I am still proud of.

I don't think that this is true for Amiga, or am I wrong?

EDIT:
Reading around, it seems that with Amiga you had to first associate any kind of extension with an icon and only later you could decide which program to use for that icon-type. I honestly don't remember anymore what I did with my Amiga500 - I remember only Rick Dangerous

The IBM 709-7090-7094 computer family had storage (we didn't use the word memory then) divided into 36-bit words. Each word could accommodate six 6-bit characters. Fortran, developed in that era, began with variable names no longer than 6 characters. It was a design choice made to economize storage space and also as an implementation convenience.

Daniel B. Martin

The C64 (or better CBM DOS) filesystem limited filenames to 16 bytes length, there was no limitation to the 8+3 filenames used by CP/M or DOS.

Amiga was always an intelligently designed system ... ahead of its time in all respects. It did not have this limitation. (Neither did the Apple ][, for that matter, although it had plenty of limitations of its own.)

Computers were extremely limited in those days, since Intel and others had not yet perfected processes for reliably (and cheaply) constructing the very-high density silicon chips that we take for granted today. Thus, an 8-kilobyte memory store might well use 8 chips. Likewise, clock speeds and chip-complexity was much lower. And, prices were higher because there was a much lower "yield" in the chip-manufacturing processes.

And so, software and hardware designers soldiered on, breaking new ground all the time, doing what couldn't be done with these "toys."

For the most part, also, the general public wasn't paying attention to computers. While computers were already "a part of their lives," computers were not yet "part of their lives." (And certainly not yet a total-distraction at the dinner table ...) I candidly admit that it's not as much fun for me today as it used to be.

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Well yes it was a limitation due to memory and this was a choice made by the designers of the early OSes for uniformity, as well as limitations. It would've taken more resources to represent lengthier filenames and given the limited resources of the time, these choices did make sense.

to make things even worse i STILL , even today, see software that outputs names or use ALL CAP 8.3 names

for some odd reason windows 7, 8 ( do not wet know about 10) 3d software outputs the 3ds format using ALL CAP 8.3 names even if the real image name is all lowercase

drives me batty in making SURE that the software i support is MULTI OS ( linux,osx,windows)

back in 1980's and early 90's this made sense --- 5 in floppy disks did not have much space
but not today

That rather suggests to me that the software is still using some old 16-bit code cruft somewhere.

Backwards compatibility in action. All the way back to Windows 3.1 probably. Sometimes it's easier than actually recoding the software.