[Stradlater]

Awhile ago, I backed up a bunch of files onto a CD and it verified fine, so I trashed those on my hard drive. Much to my dismay, some of the files had strange, long names, and do not show up in finder when I load the CD up.

When using terminal command "ls -a", all of the files are listed, but when I try the "cp" command, it says that the original file's name is too long, so I can't figure out how to copy it off the CD. The files have parentheses, as well, and I think that you just use "\(" and "\)" in terminal, but I'm not positive.

I've tried OS 9, but only a few of the files show up there, too (the ones with less then 32 characters before the .extension). I think maybe I'll have to do something with a windows computer, but if any of you have any ideas I can do from home, it would be appreciated.

[MHerberg]

Originally posted by Stradlater:

When using terminal command "ls -a", all of the files are listed, but when I try the "cp" command, it says that the original file's name is too long, so I can't figure out how to copy it off the CD. The files have parentheses, as well, and I think that you just use "\(" and "\)" in terminal, but I'm not positive.

Try this:

tar -cf - -C srcdir . | tar xpf - -C destdir

If that doest work then just tar the srcdir to your hard drive and then untar with a program that converts long files in filenames such as Stuffit Expander.

Good luck.

[Stradlater]

Originally posted by MHerberg:
Try this:

tar -cf - -C srcdir . | tar xpf - -C destdir

If that doest work then just tar the srcdir to your hard drive and then untar with a program that converts long files in filenames such as Stuffit Expander.

Good luck.

Thanks, this helped me recover a few more files, but the longest filenames came up with "Cannot stat: (null)" when trying to tar. Any remedies for this? If not, the help was still much-appreciated, it made the process easier for quite a few files.