The problem is this (I guess I could also write it at once ...)
To get names in 8.3 format as well as names in long format I use DIR without formatting parameters. This will give me a full statement. I can display the long name correctly using MAPUNICODE, but I cannot use it for access. That's what the short name is for me.
And the thing I'm talking about all the time is that this statement has otherwise shifted columns in the statement to a file, so it can't be used internationally. Well, not directly. You must first determine the locale in which the computer is running and adjust the reading of data from the file accordingly.
I used this approach in my QB64Player program, which didn't work for Ashish, but for me, and also for people from Germany, Italy, and I think also from the United States. After analyzing why, I found that the Indian version of windows produces a DIR statement shifted by one or two characters, so a program that did not count on it then returned bad names from the file. However, if I reckoned that all file and directory names would be in English only, then I could use listings of only files and only directories and only long names, and I would not know about this problem.