Data compression algorithms

[Norman Diamond]

In an article of <14 Jul 89 14:05:55 GMT>, (Richard Sargent) writes:

>>I think you'll be surprised. All codes from 128 through 255 are acceptable
[to MS-DOS].

In article <17193.24C32414 at urchin.fidonet.org> Bob.Stout at p6.f506.n106.z1.fidonet.org (Bob Stout) writes:

>OK, you got me - DOS internally couldn't care less, but the docs for most  
>versions of DOS will tell you that only A-Z, 0-9, and most special characters  
>other than '*', '?', '.', and ' ' are legal. If you follow the rules (i.e.  
>guaranteed to work for all versions of DOS including those yet to come) laid  
>down my Microsoft and IBM, 64 characters should suffice. 

Some versions of MS-DOS are sold to the other 80% of the industrialized
world.  So some versions of MS-DOS permit some of those other characters
to be used.  The rules are not guaranteed and it is not a good idea to
"know" that 64 characters suffice.

--
-- 
Norman Diamond, Sony Computer Science Lab (diamond%csl.sony.jp at relay.cs.net)
  The above opinions are inherited by your machine's init process (pid 1),
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