Filename Conventions

This COBOL system, and applications created with it, use the standard filename conventions of the operating system on which it runs.

This COBOL system also supports the New Technology File System (NTFS) file naming conventions. This means that each file or directory can consist of up to 254 characters and contain both space characters, other special characters and any number of periods (.). This COBOL system regards any text following the final period as an extension (or a trailing period as a space extension) and may remove it when creating its own names.

If you are thinking of using the new file naming conventions, you should be aware of the following:

• Avoid using the following characters when you are creating Internet applications: % # ( ) @.
• The Micro Focus COBOL products available on UNIX contain components that do not handle long filenames and filenames and folder names containing spaces. Avoid using long names and names containing spaces for files that will be published to UNIX.
• The Oracle 1.8 version of Pro*Cobol does not support filenames that contain spaces.