HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Pathnames
A pathname describes the route (or path) to a file. It is composed of
the file name prefixed by any directory names. A slash (/) separates
each part of a pathname. The maximum pathname length is 1023 characters.
Although pathnames can be 1023 characters, other system limits restrict
pathname length. For example, the command interpreter limits the number
of characters you can type in a command to 511 characters.
While the system does not support pathnames of greater than 1023
characters, it does not explicitly prevent their creation. Although this
limit is large enough to cover any practical usage, the system will
respond in a degraded fashion to any object with a path longer than 1023
characters. For example, the STORE utility will not be able to back up
these files. The offending objects will have to be removed "by hand" by
setting your CWD far enough down the path so that a 1023 character
relative name can reference and purge the files and/or directories.
When the pathname begins at the root directory, it is called an absolute
pathname. An example of an absolute pathname is:
/SYS/MYGRP/dir1/2file
The example describes the location of the file 2file. It is in the
directory dir1, which is a subdirectory of the MYGRP group; MYGRP is in
the SYS account, which is a subdirectory of the root directory (/).
An absolute pathname is similar to a fully qualified MPE file name in
that the names of all the components are listed. The fully qualified MPE
file name TDP.PUB.SYS translates to the absolute pathname /SYS/PUB/TDP.
NOTE All MPE syntax names must be specified in uppercase.
Other pathnames are relative to a process's current working directory.
(The current working directory is the directory where you are working.)
So if you specify the name ./jvance/spook, MPE looks for a subdirectory
called jvance in your current working directory, then for a file called
spook in that directory.