To help determine the expected behavior of OpenVMS utilities
    and commands for ODS-5, the following levels of support have
    been established. Each level outlines the acceptable behavior
    of a utility or command when it encounters an extended (ODS-5
    compliant) file specification.

    The levels of support for ODS-5 are defined in the following
    sections:

1  –  Full Support

    OpenVMS utilities and commands that offer full support for ODS-5
    have been specifically modified to take advantage of all the
    features of extended file naming. These utilities and commands
    should accept and handle extended file specifications without
    error and without modifying their expected case.

    In addition, OpenVMS commands and utilities that fully support
    Extended File Specifications can accept and produce long file
    specifications that exceed the traditional 255-byte limit in
    their original form-without requiring them to be abbreviated in
    Directory ID (DID) or File ID (FID) format.

2  –  Default Support

    OpenVMS utilities and commands with default support have had
    little or no modification to take advantage of Extended File
    Specifications features. These utilities and commands are
    expected to handle most of the attributes of extended file
    specifications (such as new characters and deep directory
    structures) correctly. However, issues with case sensitivity
    and case blindness (such as converting lowercase characters to
    uppercase) may occur.

    In contrast with utilities that have full support, utilities with
    default support rely on DID and FID abbreviation offered by RMS
    to handle long file specifications. As a result, these utilities
    are subject to the following restrictions related to DID and FID
    abbreviation:

    o  Matching operations in an environment where FID abbreviation
       is used may not always work as expected. For example, wildcard
       matching operations may not capture all target file names
       because the long file names may be represented in their
       numeric FID abbreviation form. This restriction specifically
       applies to matching operations that are performed outside of
       RMS.

    o  Wildcards and sticky defaults cannot be used with a FID
       abbreviation. For example, the following commands are illegal:

       $ DIRECTORY a[1,2,3]*.txt
       $ COPY a[1,2,3].txt *.txt2

       Because FID abbreviations are a unique numeric representation
       of one file, they cannot be used to represent or match any
       other file.

    o  Creating a file using a FID abbreviation is illegal.

3  –  No Support for Extended File Naming

    OpenVMS utilities and commands that do not support extended
    file naming can function on ODS-5 volumes; however, they are
    restricted to operating with traditional file specifications
    only. These utilities and commands should be used carefully
    under Extended File Specifications because they may not function
    successfully when they encounter extended file specifications.

4  –  No Support for ODS-5

    OpenVMS utilities and commands that do not support the ODS-
    5 volume structure cannot handle extended file naming. These
    utilities and commands should be used carefully under Extended
    File Specifications because they may not function successfully
    on ODS-5 volumes even when they only encounter traditional file
    specifications.

    The following table lists the OpenVMS utilities and commands
    that do not support Extended File Specifications because of
    limitations with either handling extended file names or the ODS-5
    volume structure.

    Component              Notes

    No ODS-5 Support

    Disk defragmenters     Unsupported unless a specific
                           defragmentation tool documents that it has
                           been updated to support an ODS-5 volume.

    No Extended File Naming Support

    Code compilers         Cannot use extended file names for object
                           files. However, code compilers can create
                           applications that support extended names.
    INSTALL
    Known images           Do not rename to an extended file name.
    LINK                   Cannot output an image with an extended
                           file name.
    Network files          Do not rename to an extended file name.
    (NET*.DAT)
    Object modules (.OBJ)  Do not rename to an extended file name.
    Page and swap files    Do not use an extended file name.
    SYSGEN                 Do not write a parameter file with an
                           extended file name.
    System startup files   Do not rename to an extended file name.