Why do some system files have ampersands(&) in their names e.g. &PH&?

[Timothy Morris]

Hello MVDBMS forum,

I hope you're all well.

This is my first post. I have been gradually learning UniVerse and MultiValue DBMS over the past 3-4 years for work and took a deep dive recently.

I have a not-important question that I haven't been able to find an answer to anywhere:

Why are there ampersands (&) in some of the system files e.g. &PH& and &COMO& in UniVerse (and perhaps other MultiValue DBMS)? It seems peculiar. Perhaps a legacy from when there was limited space for character encoding and file name length? Just because?

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Tim

[Wols Lists]

On 27/07/2022 00:19, Timothy Morris wrote:
> Why are there ampersands (&) in some of the system files e.g. &PH& and
> &COMO& in UniVerse (and perhaps other MultiValue DBMS)? It seems
> peculiar. Perhaps a legacy from when there was limited space for
> character encoding and file name length? Just because?

Because they are originally from Pr1me INFORMATION, and Pr1me used & as
a special character.

We're so used to the Unix and DOS/Windows characters now, we forget
there were a lot of other systems out there ...

Cheers,
Wol

[Will Johnson]

When these files were introduced, some clients might, for whatever reason, actually have a file named PH.