File path formats

Roberto Waltman

AmigaOS:

device:dir1-dir2-...-filename

or, alternatively:

volume:dir1-dir2-...-filename

or:

buttign:dir1-dir2-...-filename

Device names are (customarily) three-letter identifiers. Each of them is reserved for a particular physical disk drive, or for a HDD parbreastion.

For example, the canonical device name for the first floppy drive is "DF0:", whereas the second floppy drive would get "DF1:", the third one "DF2:" etc. Hard disk parbreastions are typically named either using a sequence like "DH0:", "DH1:", "DH2:", etc., or "HD0:", "HD1:", etc. The device name for the dynamically resizing RAM Disk is "RAM:".

Volume names are names given to a particular removable disk or HDD parbreastion when formatted. Volume names and physical device names are fully interchangeable in the paths. A typical volume name could be "System:", "Workbench:", "Work:", "Data:", "Deluxe Paint:" etc.

If the user enters a path with a volume name that is not currently mounted on the system, the OS will automatically pop up a dialog asking "Please insert the volume VolumeName: in any drive." The dialog will go away once the correct disk is inserted. This way, when writing application software or scripts that need to work with removable media - and where the user is expected to change the media for you at times -, you can refer to e.g. particular floppies simply by using their volume names in the paths. (There is no need to program in any checks whether the correct volume is in the drive; the system will take care of asking it from the user if it isn't. Much multi-floppy software was written that operated this way.)

File an directory names can be up to 30 characters each. They may contain Latin-1 characters, spaces and mixed casing (the system is case-retentive, but not case-sensitive.) There is no concept of file extensions as a separate enbreasty. You can tag the file names with "extensions" if you like, but they're just part of the regular filename. "File extensions" are not often used at all.

"buttigns" are virtual volume names that can be buttigned to any given directory by using the buttign command. For example, the AmigaOS expects to find device drivers from the "Devs:" directory, but that's just an buttign, not an actual physical device name or a logical volume name. The "Devs:" location can be buttigned to point to whatever directory on whichever parbreastion. For example,

buttign Devs: DH0:System-Devs

would make

cd Devs:

equal to

cd DH0:System-Devs

Previous directory is "-" and the root of the current logical volume is ":". For example, "cd" takes you one step back, and "cd :" takes you to the root of the current parbreastion or drive.

-- znark