3.4 Global variables

Global flags may be set to 1 or to 0.

The following global flags are recognized:

MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK

If this is set to 1, mtools skips most of its sanity checks. This is needed to read some Atari disks which have been made with the earlier ROMs, and which would not be recognized otherwise.

MTOOLS_FAT_COMPATIBILITY

If this is set to 1, mtools skips the fat size checks. Some disks have a bigger FAT than they really need to. These are rejected if this option is not set.

MTOOLS_LOWER_CASE

If this is set to 1, mtools displays all-upper-case short filenames as lowercase. This has been done to allow a behavior which is consistent with older versions of mtools which didn’t know about the case bits.

MTOOLS_NO_VFAT

If this is set to 1, mtools won’t generate VFAT entries for filenames which are mixed-case, but otherwise legal dos filenames. This is useful when working with DOS versions which can’t grok VFAT long names, such as FreeDOS.

MTOOLS_DOTTED_DIR

In a wide directory, prints the short name with a dot instead of spaces separating the basename and the extension.

MTOOLS_NAME_NUMERIC_TAIL

If this is set to one (default), generate numeric tails for all long names (~1). If set to zero, only generate numeric tails if otherwise a clash would have happened.

MTOOLS_TWENTY_FOUR_HOUR_CLOCK

If 1, uses the European notation for times (twenty four hour clock), else uses the UK/US notation (am/pm)

MTOOLS_LOCK_TIMEOUT

How long, in seconds, to wait for a locked device to become free. Defaults to 30.

Example: Inserting the following line into your configuration file instructs mtools to skip the sanity checks:

  MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1

Global variables may also be set via the environment:

  export MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1

Global string variables may be set to any value:

MTOOLS_DATE_STRING

The format used for printing dates of files. By default, is dd-mm-yyyy.