6 ms·

I also try to avoid non-ASCII characters in file names (and I am also on Linux). I also like to avoid spaces and most punctuations in file names (if I need word

I also try to avoid non-ASCII characters in file names (and I am also on Linux). I also like to avoid spaces and most punctuations in file names (if I need word separation I can use underscores or hyphens).

skissane 3y ago
Sometimes I wish they had disallowed spaces in file names. Historically, many systems were very restrictive in what characters are allowed in file names. In part in reaction to that, Unix went to the other extreme, allowing any byte except NUL and slash. I think that was a mistake - allowing C0 control characters in file names (bytes 0x01 thru 0x1F) serves no useful use case, it just creates the potential for bugs and security vulnerabilities. I wish they’d blocked them. POSIX debated banning C0 controls, although appears to have settled on just a recommendation (not a mandate) that implementations disallow newline: https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=251 https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=251
- samatman 3y ago
  I firmly agree that control characters, including tab and newline, should have been shown the door decades ago. All they do is make problems. But spaces in filenames are really just an inconvenience at most for heavy terminal users, and are a natural thing to use for basically everyone else. All my markdown files are word-word-word.md, but all my WYSIWIG documents are "Word word word.doc". The hassle of constantly explaining to angry civilians "why won't it let me write this file" would be worse than the hassle of having to quote or backslash-escape the occasional path in the shell.
  - skissane 3y ago
    Spaces in file names are the cause of countless bugs in shell scripts, even C code which uses APIs like system() or popen(). Yes, solutions exist to those issues, but many people forget, and they add complexity which otherwise might not be necessary. For non-technical WYSIWYG users, there is a simple solution: auto-replace space with underscore when user enters a filename containing it; you could even convert the underscore back to a space on display. Some GUIs already do stuff like this anyway - e.g. macOS exchanging slash and colon in its GUI layer (primarily for backward compatibility with Classic MacOS where slash not colon was the path separator.)
    - eviks 3y ago
      If you have the power of a wish, why do you wish to make the world worse without such a common thing like spaces instead of wishing for the legacy APIs to have a better solution?
      - skissane 3y ago
        Why wish the world to be more complicated by insisting a character do double duty both as a valid character in file names and also a delimiter in lists of file names, such as commonly occur in command line arguments? By allowing a character to do double duty in that way, you make necessary all the complexity of quoting/escaping. If the set of file name characters, and the set of file name delimiters, are orthogonal, you reduce (possibly even eliminate) the need for that complexity. Also, allowing space in filenames creates other difficulties, such as file names with trailing spaces, double spaces, etc, which might not be noticed, even two files whose names differ only in the number of spaces. A character like underscore does not have the same problem, since a trailing underscore or a double underscore is more readily recognised than a trailing or double space.
        eviks 3y ago
        Because the land of cli args is inconsequential compared in scale compared to the general world of computer use (so it's better to wish for a tiny segment to have better design), and banning spaces does not remove the complexity of escaping (how do you escape _?) Your trailing/double space issue is also easy to solve (in the world of wishes) with highlighting or other mechanisms, so making the world much worse by banning spaces is not the appropriate remedy
        samatman 3y ago
        I've never used a filesystem which doesn't remove trailing spaces from file names. Try it.
        skissane 3y ago

skissane 3y ago

Sometimes I wish they had disallowed spaces in file names. Historically, many systems were very restrictive in what characters are allowed in file names. In part in reaction to that, Unix went to the other extreme, allowing any byte except NUL and slash. I think that was a mistake - allowing C0 control characters in file names (bytes 0x01 thru 0x1F) serves no useful use case, it just creates the potential for bugs and security vulnerabilities. I wish they’d blocked them. POSIX debated banning C0 controls, although appears to have settled on just a recommendation (not a mandate) that implementations disallow newline: https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=251 https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=251

samatman 3y ago
I firmly agree that control characters, including tab and newline, should have been shown the door decades ago. All they do is make problems. But spaces in filenames are really just an inconvenience at most for heavy terminal users, and are a natural thing to use for basically everyone else. All my markdown files are word-word-word.md, but all my WYSIWIG documents are "Word word word.doc". The hassle of constantly explaining to angry civilians "why won't it let me write this file" would be worse than the hassle of having to quote or backslash-escape the occasional path in the shell.
- skissane 3y ago
  Spaces in file names are the cause of countless bugs in shell scripts, even C code which uses APIs like system() or popen(). Yes, solutions exist to those issues, but many people forget, and they add complexity which otherwise might not be necessary. For non-technical WYSIWYG users, there is a simple solution: auto-replace space with underscore when user enters a filename containing it; you could even convert the underscore back to a space on display. Some GUIs already do stuff like this anyway - e.g. macOS exchanging slash and colon in its GUI layer (primarily for backward compatibility with Classic MacOS where slash not colon was the path separator.)
  - eviks 3y ago
    If you have the power of a wish, why do you wish to make the world worse without such a common thing like spaces instead of wishing for the legacy APIs to have a better solution?
    - skissane 3y ago
      Why wish the world to be more complicated by insisting a character do double duty both as a valid character in file names and also a delimiter in lists of file names, such as commonly occur in command line arguments? By allowing a character to do double duty in that way, you make necessary all the complexity of quoting/escaping. If the set of file name characters, and the set of file name delimiters, are orthogonal, you reduce (possibly even eliminate) the need for that complexity. Also, allowing space in filenames creates other difficulties, such as file names with trailing spaces, double spaces, etc, which might not be noticed, even two files whose names differ only in the number of spaces. A character like underscore does not have the same problem, since a trailing underscore or a double underscore is more readily recognised than a trailing or double space.
      - eviks 3y ago
        Because the land of cli args is inconsequential compared in scale compared to the general world of computer use (so it's better to wish for a tiny segment to have better design), and banning spaces does not remove the complexity of escaping (how do you escape _?) Your trailing/double space issue is also easy to solve (in the world of wishes) with highlighting or other mechanisms, so making the world much worse by banning spaces is not the appropriate remedy
        samatman 3y ago
        I've never used a filesystem which doesn't remove trailing spaces from file names. Try it.
        skissane 3y ago