FAT32 volumes: How to get 8.3 short path and file names?

Hi,

is there a way to get the the 8.3 filename for a file that is stored on a mounted FAT32 volume?

I know that reading directory content can be done with opendir/readdir/closedir commands but that does not help much here.

The reason for getting the 8.3 filenames is that these file names need to be stored in an old proprietary legacy file format which can only handle 8.3 path and file names.

Many thanks,
Fredo

From the "man 8 mount" manual page

shortname=lower|win95|winnt|mixed

Defines the behaviour for creation and display of filenames which fit into 8.3 characters. If a long name for a file exists, it will always be
preferred display. There are four modes: :

lower Force the short name to lower case upon display; store a long name when the short name is not all upper case. This mode is the default.

win95 Force the short name to upper case upon display; store a long name when the short name is not all upper case.

winnt Display the shortname as is; store a long name when the short name is not all lower case or all upper case.

mixed Display the short name as is; store a long name when the short name is not all upper case.

Thanks.

Being rather new to *NIX programming, I still don't know how to deal with that in my program: If a FAT volume is already mounted with the default mode=lower, how can I retrieve the short file names from within my C program? Should my program try to unmount the volume and remount it with mode=mixed? This would irritate my users a lot, I think
Or is there a vfat API function that gives me the short file name for a given long file name (like in Windows)?

Thanks again,
Fredo

I'm not sure if it would work, but you could try to convert the long file names to 8.3 yourself.