VMS Document naming length

[Karen Lee_3]

Some of my Pathworks users have a tendancy to create very long document names on my Openvms 7.3-2 Alpha Server. I was always told there was a 132 character total length (including directory names) for VMS - is that true? Is there a limit?

[Karl Rohwedder]

ODS-5 formatted disks allow for 255 subdirectories of 235 chars name (ASCII).
See HELP EXT_FILE_SPEC for more info about ODS-5 or read the fine manuals.

regards Kalle

[Karen Lee_3]

i should have mentioned - we have ods-2 volumes

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

Karen,

The rules for OpenVMS filespecs can be found in the OpenVMS Users Manual (available online from http://www.hp.com/products/openvms ). See Section 3.1 "Understanding File Names and File Specifications".

Most of the limits apply to components of the filespec, but there's an overall limit of 512 bytes for the full filespec.

That said, Pathworks or Advanced Server may change the rules. For example, even on ODS-2 disks, pathworks shares can exceed the usual limit of 8 directories. You'll have to check the documentation for the exact version you're running to find the limits (though I'd be very surprised if it were as low as 132 characters).

Also realise that since pathworks is sharing to file systems with different character sets, the OpenVMS filename may be different from the user visible filename. A PC filename containing characters outside the ODS-2 character set will generate a longer OpenVMS filename. Thus, any limits may vary depending on what characters are used.

Of course, the other answer to this question is "Try it and see when it breaks!"

[Dave Gudewicz]

You might want to consider ODS-5. From our experience its a painless move from 2 to 5.

See help set volume/structure_level for more details.

Of course, YMMV

Dave...