I had a directory that contained files with names longer than 10 characters. I used ashell copy command (as oppose to linux) to copy these files to another directory and it truncated the names down to 10 digits.

Is this by design? Should ashell even attempt the copy? or warn if this is the case?

You need to enclose in double-quotes any filespecs that are not 10.3 compatible. For example:

This technique should work any place you use a filespec within a program (e.g. OPEN, LOOKUP, etc.) and also on the command line of any LIT command that supports wildcards, plus a few that don't, such as VUE and TYPE. (See Native Filespecs , which I located in the documentation index under File > specs).

i get the program specific filespecs, i guess i expected the operating system environment to protect me from myself...

The problem with native specs in LIT arguments is that they may look like switches, so the quoting was required to preserve compatibility with existing syntax.