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:
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.
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All MPE syntax names must be specified in uppercase.
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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.
