A Windows 2003 Sever Work Around Needed if possible

[fp at casabellagallery.com]

Sharon Miller posted:

> A while back one of my  customers migrated from SCO Unix Filepro to
> Windows 2003 server with the  Network version ofFilepro. After some
> minor issues and setup  everything has been running pretty smoothe with
> the exception of @CB which he had to give up... ( a sad thing to loose)
> . He has come up with another more drastic  problem.....
> 
> Most of his files are longer than 8.3 characters.... This has not caused
> a
> problem, until now. Everything in the runtime side has worked fine. It
> can still pull up the files even though thet do not follow the dos
> convention...
> But now he needs to change a field length in the define mode.... Since
> the define mode does not see any file that has a period in it, it can
> not pull ut file in  the define mode to increase length or add screens
> etc.... is
> there away around this. I don't see why the runtime (dclerk, dxmaint,
> and dreport) see the files correctly but not the dcabe and define.... I
> understand the old dos limitations of not being able to create a file...
> 
> but if the file is already there, can't filepro update it..... IE the
> need
> to add fields, change field lengths, add new screens etc.
> 
> If you could give me a work around without renaming the files, this
> would be appreciated. The remaning of the files would cause a great
> inconvience due to the fact in the processing there are many lookups and
> 
> all would have to be changed manually. If it were only one file, it
> might not be too bad but there are close to a hundred files with lookups
> 
> in all.
> 
> I do not need to create new files with names longer than 8.3 charcater
> limitation just be able to modify the ones that migrated over from unix.
> If filepro can not open the file with the define mode is there a dos or
> windows command that you could alias the file so filepro could see
> it.... I link under unix you can ln (link files to have more than one
> name... is there something like this under the windows environement) to
> make some changes to these files.
> 

If what Haussman susggested does not work, you might want to contemplate
transfering the file back to UNIX, modify it there and transfer it back
to WIN.

I wonder why a variable which is defined as related to "variable" behavior
will change how file names are handled ???


Jose Lerebours

PS:  I would like to know what was your remedy to this problem if you do not
mind posting it later.  Thanks!