Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 21:35:24 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm-dated-1044934525.646d9a@mired.org> To: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> Cc: Walter <walterk1@earthlink.net>, Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: handling non-printable characters in file names Message-ID: <15937.55292.559480.418355@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <3E41D21C.30207@potentialtech.com> References: <3E41A24E.9090607@earthlink.net> <15937.47061.743702.496178@guru.mired.org> <3E41BD21.9020508@potentialtech.com> <15937.51721.287955.421825@guru.mired.org> <3E41D21C.30207@potentialtech.com>
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In <3E41D21C.30207@potentialtech.com>, Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> typed: > Mike Meyer wrote: > > In <3E41BD21.9020508@potentialtech.com>, Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> typed: > >>Mike Meyer wrote: > >>>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? > > As for problems, what happens if you're extracting an archive that > > includes one of the "illegal" characters. Most archivers just stop > > dead on open errors. That's pretty useless. What should happen, and why? > > What would happen if you tried to extract an archive where the filenames > had \x00 in them? Wouldn't be much worse than mkisofs when it can't > figure out an iso9660 name for a file. Ah, but 0x00 isn't *illegal* in file names, it just terminates them. So I'd expect that to happen. Try it and see. Which means you still haven't answered the question of what an archiver should do if you ask it to create a file with an illegal character in the file name. > > What happens if I try and open an existing file that has an illegal > > character in the file name? If it's allowed, why? If it isn't, what > > error does it return, and why? > Don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to open it. I'm talking > about restricting the _creation_ of filenames. But I thought the whole point was to let you use inferior tools that broke on such characters. If they can still be fed such files, you've failed. > >>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! > > Not even MS-DOS is that restrictive. Which means you either have to > > apply the restrictions to foreign file systems, or you haven't solved > > your problem. Of course, if your foreign file systems are used by > > foreign OS's, you may suddenly find yourself with files with spaces in > > the names anyway. > That's why I want to restrict it! The biggest problems I have is with > fileservers that are for Mac, Windows, and Unix clients all. They are > always creating files that the other two systems can't easily use! What do you mean "Can't easily use"? They are as usable on Unix as they are on the original system. Just use a graphical file browser. Or type \ . That's not noticably harder than typing _. > > Besides, you may someday start using a GUI file browser, and suddenly > > you won't be able to have a file that has your name on it. > Use underscores, capitilization, dashes, ... we're not talking about the > end of the world here. No, we're talking about an arbitrary restriction in an OS that's been moving steadily away from them throughout most of it's history. After all, a file name with a space in it isn't the end of the world, either. > > That would > > suck. I won't talk about explaining to Mac users why they couldn't put > > '/' in their file names on Unix. We also won't talk about creating > > files called "* " in some poor victims directory... > That's another good reason to restrict it ... so you can't create files > such as '*' and '?' and similar. Why shouldn't I be able to create those files? Just because some interfaces have problems with them? If it really bothers you, use another interface. There's a large collection of them available. > > It's funny - for years, I used to make fun of Microso~ because they > > had such screwy file name constraints. Now they've fixed their file > > systems, and people want to impose constraints on the file systems I > > use every day. > No, not the filesystem, certain servers. At the discretion of the > sysadmin. Power to the sysadmins!! Actually, FreeBSD already has a file system that lets you disallow character sets. See the mount-msdos man page for details. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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