portability and filenames without extension in TeX

Hello!

This posting is about creating text-files with TeX whose
filenames have no extension.

[ Why might one need this?
E.g., when submitting a new package to CTAN, you are asked to
submit a text-file named "README". ]

Usually if no filename-extension is supplied to the filename-
argument of the \openout-primitive, TeX automatically attaches
the extension ".tex".

I found out that with MiKTeX 2.4 under Win95B (OSR2) you can
prevent this by supplying a trailing dot but no extension. On
that platform the following code delivers a file whose name is
"MYFILE" - without extension. (I checked the resulting file
and FAT-entries with a Hex/RAW-Disk-Editor.)

\newwrite\mywrite
\immediate\openout\mywrite MYFILE.\relax
\immediate\write\mywrite{Some text}
\immediate\closeout\mywrite
\bye

Questions: Is this a "portable" method?
What will happen on other platforms?
(Are there platforms/file-systems where filenames
without extensions are impossible?)
Can you assume that supplying just a trailing dot
instead of a complete filename-extension works out on
all platforms for automatically generating files with
"extensionless" filenames by means of some docstrip-
based ins/dtx-script?
If not: What other methods (besides manual or
automatized post-processing/renaming of the files in
question) would you suggest instead?

Sincerely

Ulrich

.

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