WinXP dir command: 3 and 4 char extensions are the same?

Question

I'm trying to recursively search a directory tree to find all of the .asp files using the following command:

dir *.asp /s

For some reason, this returns not only the asp files, but also the aspx files.

How can I force it to ignore the aspx files?

Answer 1

dir /x

For compatibility reasons, Windows generates a 8.3 name for every long file name created, and wildcard matching code (FindFirstFile()) checks both the original and shortened names. Use dir /x to see what short names are assigned to each file.

The "extension" part of a 8.3 name is always created by simply truncating the last extension to at most 3 characters: .aspx to .ASP

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When using the NTFS filesystem, 8.3 name creation can be disabled system-wide using:

fsutil behavior set disable8dot3

However, this won't affect existing names. You will have to rename each file and then rename it back to its original name.

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See also: Directory search in Windows Command Prompt shows incorrect output!

Answer 2

Of course this varies according to what command interpreter's DIR command one uses. The DIR command in Take Command, for example, only matches long names by default and so doesn't exhibit this behaviour. (Matching of short as well as long names can be turned on for compatibility with CMD's DIR command.) So there are ways to address this that don't require FSUTIL and administrator privileges.

Answer 3

Interesting - seems to be a bug...

Considering, I would pipe it through find like so:

dir /s *.asp | find /i /v ".aspx "