HP NonStop G-Series - Manual (Page 26)

2 The OSS File System
The OSS file system conforms to the POSIX standards and is therefore essentially the same as a
UNIX file system. It is fundamentally different from the Guardian file system in several ways. The
most apparent differences are the overall file-system structure and the file-naming rules.
To understand the OSS file system as a whole, first become familiar with the following OSS concepts:
•
“OSS Files and Filenames”
•
“OSS Directories and Subdirectories”
•
“OSS Pathnames”
•
“OSS Filesets”
•
“Specifying Names With Pattern-Matching Characters ”
OSS Files and Filenames
An OSS file can contain the text of a document, a computer program, records for a general ledger,
the numerical or statistical output of a computer program, or other data. No distinctions are made
between files containing these data.
An OSS filename can contain any character except the / (slash) but, to prevent difficulties, avoid
using the characters that have special meanings to the OSS shell:
backslash \
ampersand &
angle brackets < >
question mark ?
dollar sign $
brackets [ ]
asterisk *
vertical bar |
You can use a . (period or dot) in the middle of a filename but never at the beginning of the
filename, unless you want the file to be “hidden” when a simple listing of files is performed. For
information about listing hidden files, see
Chapter 8 (page 93) .
Open System Services distinguishes between uppercase and lowercase letters in filenames (that
is, it is case-sensitive). For example, the following three filenames specify three distinct files: filea,
Filea
, and FILEA.
OSS Filename Length
OSS filenames can have a maximum length of 248 characters.
OSS File Types
Unlike the Guardian environment, the OSS environment does not support file codes or the different
types of files they indicate. Instead, Open System Services treats all files as the same type, regardless
of their content or purpose. Therefore, in Open System Services, you can use an editor on any file,
whether the file contains a listing, object code, or a database table. Furthermore, OSS files are
not line-oriented; they simply contain streams of text delimited by carriage returns.
26 The OSS File System