From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Feb 5 17:42: 5 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4FA2637B401 for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 17:42:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net [24.53.161.166]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7506443F85 for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 17:41:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com (working [172.16.0.95]) by pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id h161h8T5073593; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 20:43:08 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Message-ID: <3E41BD21.9020508@potentialtech.com> Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 20:40:49 -0500 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20021127 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mike Meyer Cc: Walter , Questions Subject: Re: handling non-printable characters in file names References: <3E41A24E.9090607@earthlink.net> <15937.47061.743702.496178@guru.mired.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mike Meyer wrote: > In <3E41A24E.9090607@earthlink.net>, Walter typed: > >>There's probably someone who can explain why non- >>printable characters are useful in file names, but >>I'd really rather disallow them altogether - if >>there's a build option or control flag to set. >>Anyone? > > BSD is character-set neutral. Well, it tries. The only two characters > that are magic in file names are 0x2f and 0x00, because they both > terminate the file name. Other than that, you are free to use whatever > character encoding you want to. That's why characters that may be > unprintable in some encodings are allowed in file names. What shows > up in the locale en_US.ISO8859-1 as "Resumé" will show up with an > unprintable last character if you haven't set the LANG environment > variable. > > The only way to change this behavior is to change the kernel source to > support it. Expect resistance from every developer in a country that > doesn't use the English alphabet if you try and get that change put > into the tree. What about a feature that allows an administrator to list characters that are disallowed in filenames and directory names? You don't think that would be useful? Do you really think admins would mind? I think it would be very helpful - I'd disallow whitespace right off the bat, as it causes more problems than I can keep track of! -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message