how are >8bit filesystems translated into kernel?

Teunis Peters (teunis@usa.net)
Sat, 23 Aug 1997 18:42:37 -0600 (MDT)


On Wed, 20 Aug 1997, Erik Corry wrote:

[sum: Linux already standardized on UTF-8 internally -
read usr/src/linux/Documentation/unicode.txt]

> > This is _JUST_ for 16bit+ filesystems. Not 8bit filesystems like ext2 or
> > the like.
>
> As far as I understood, ext2 had already been standardised on UTF-8.
> Of course most (all?) of the effects of this decision take place
> in user space, so people are free to do something else if they really
> want to. Especially people who prefer an 8-bit standard (no '/' issue).

So, to ask the question I was really looking for:

How are >8bit filesystems translated into 8bit in the kernel?
vfat? (seems to drop hi byte? <ow>)
ntfs? [don't have source for this one]
any others? (not that I can think of any others)

[My suggestion of translating -> UTF-8 would only occur on reading the
filename. On VFAT who cares about speed, but NTFS it might matter (if it
was ever adopted into the kernel)]

Hmm- maybe that alias system could be used to store native filenames +
translated form so kernel understands it?

Actually, I'm largely only curious about this for my document on porting
Linux to other platforms (not other countries) - and the issue of >8bit
can (and has) come up.

> Even without a big discussion on linux-kernel. Hint, hint.

Hint taken <g>... I was asking for something else and hit a KNOWN holy
war <sigh>

On another (possibly dangerous) tangent:

(incidentally, the only encoding formats I have info on are Unicode-2.0
[UTF-8 + brethren], EUS, JIS, SJIS, and the archaic IBM-PC native format).
Can anyone give me any pointers to others? (like latin-1,latin-2,...)
NO BOOKS! ESPECIALLY __NOT__ ISO BOOKS!
[I can't afford books and there is no library within 500km+ that has this
kind of info (or just about any info actually) - the internet is my only
resource]

reply personal only si vous plait <sp>?

TIA and G'day, eh?
- Teunis