Punctuation marks in file names
in [Mac Systems]
|
From: Wayne C. Morris on 17 Jan 2010 22:10 In article <hivo99$mn1$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: > Wayne C. Morris wrote: > > One could find ways to type such names without punctuation, but in many > > cases it would be awkward, and it wouldn't be the _correct_ name. > > You have to make a choice. Awkward to create and awkward to read, or awkward > to do anything else with? "Awkward to do anything else with"? Not by a long shot. Mac apps will accept any filenames that the Finder does. > You can avoid both with only slightly more effort: > > There are lots of sortable date/time formats that don't contain slashes > or colons. Some of them are not hard to read, such as 2009_11_27_1657. That's a matter of opinion. I consider the use of underscores to represent slashes and spaces to be awkward to read, non-intuitive, and ugly. > Instead of putting " or ' or ` in a filename, which is tricky > for the shell, use ' ' “ ” Why on earth should I hobble myself by avoiding characters that have a special meaning in a UNIX command shell I almost never use? To save myself a few extra keystrokes once in a blue moon? At any rate, my message was in response to the question "why would you want to use punctuation marks in a file name?" Your suggestion of substituting a different punctuation character doesn't address the validity of my response.
From: Wes Groleau on 17 Jan 2010 23:30 Barry Margolin wrote: > shine <useraddshine-nospam(a)gmail.com> wrote: > It's not uncommon to include dates in filenames. E.g. "Expenses > 1/16/2010". Since the format you suggest is not allowed by 99% of the operating systems in use today, I would say it is very "uncommon." -- Wes Groleau Oral language in the classroom—what is it good for? http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/barrett?itemid=1351
From: Paul Sture on 17 Jan 2010 18:33 In article <hivo99$mn1$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: > Wayne C. Morris wrote: > > One could find ways to type such names without punctuation, but in many > > cases it > > would be awkward, and it wouldn't be the _correct_ name. > > You have to make a choice. Awkward to create and awkward to read, > or awkward to do anything else with? > > You can avoid both with only slightly more effort: > > There are lots of sortable date/time formats that don't contain slashes > or colons. Some of them are not hard to read, such as 2009_11_27_1657. > > Instead of putting " or ' or ` in a filename, which is tricky > for the shell, use � � � � > > Instead of a space in a filename, an underscore. (Non-breaking space > might work, but underscore is better because it's visible.) I prefer underscores to spaces and there's the perennial problem of transferring files to different file systems. When dealing with URLs, which are often derived from underlying file names, it all gets more complicated. <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html> "Thus, only alphanumerics, the special characters "$-_.+!*'(),", and reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may be used unencoded within a URL." The problem with encoded characters is that they aren't really readable by humans and are certainly not suitable for printed documentation. Transcription errors apart, they can be used for URL spoofing. -- Paul Sture
From: Barry Margolin on 18 Jan 2010 03:28 In article <hj0o4e$ui3$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: > Barry Margolin wrote: > > shine <useraddshine-nospam(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > It's not uncommon to include dates in filenames. E.g. "Expenses > > 1/16/2010". > > Since the format you suggest is not allowed > by 99% of the operating systems in use today, > I would say it is very "uncommon." There are 3 OSes in common use these days: Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac OS X. I think 67% of them allow that filename. -- Barry Margolin, barmar(a)alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** *** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
From: JF Mezei on 18 Jan 2010 05:35
Barry Margolin wrote: > There are 3 OSes in common use these days: Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac > OS X. I think 67% of them allow that filename. "allow" is one thing. Easy to use is another. If you have a file that contains a $, you can't simply copy MY$PAYCHECK.PDF and then paste it in a command line environment because the "$" has significance in the command line, and you will have to edit the command to MY\$PAYCHECK.PDF before pressing return to process the command. When a name contains one or more spaces, you need to enclose it in quotes etc. |