>>If we're talking about file names, some characters are not valid, and others are effectively duplicates e.g. "A" and "a" are the same because Windows file names aren't case sensitive.
>>
>>A better estimate is 10 digits 0-9 + 26 alphabetic chars, or 36 total chars.
>>
>>36^5 is about 60 million.
>
>I would agree with John R, you are not taking into account UNICODE support for the file names, or even simple valid characters like ñúóéáí etc. (oh, and the space!)
The OP has only 5 chars/bytes of space for storage, so UniCode is out. If you want to include special characters like space, sure, that's to one's taste.
As for ñúóéáí etc. - FireFox underlines it with a red squiggly line, has no idea what it is. Clearly people who have lived south of the Equator start writing strangely ;-)
Regards. Al
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