While, per definition, every WPS object has a title associated with it, only file-system objects (that is, &link_folders; and &link_datafiles; which physically reside in a file system) also carry a so-called "real name". This is the name of the file that the file-system object represents on disk, as visible with the DIR command on an &os2; command line.

In many cases, the real name is identical to the object title (as displayed on the "Icon" page); however, file-system names have certain limitations.

For object titles, the only restriction is that they cannot be longer than 256 characters, and that the backslash (\) character is forbidden.

By contrast, depending on the object's file system, the following restrictions apply to the object's real name:

Naturally, the backslash character (\) is invalid with every file system because it is used as the path separator in &os2;.

If the title of the file-system object obeys these restrictions, the real name is identical to the title. However, if not, the WPS modifies the title to match these restrictions by truncating it to the allowed file-name length and replacing illegal characters with exclamation marks (!). The original title is then stored with the object in the .LONGNAME extended attribute.

In that case, the "real name" that is displayed with the DIR command from the &os2; command line is different from the title displayed in the WPS folder.

Examples:

  1. The folder title is LongFolderTitle, but the folder resides on a FAT drive, so the path on the folder's "File" page will display C:\LONGFOLD only.

  2. The folder title is Accounting/Taxes, but the real name is Accounting!Taxes (assuming the folder is on an HPFS or JFS drive).