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Mac OS9 users created filenames with spaces at the front. They did this for years. Their goal was file sorting. When they wanted a file to sort higher, I believ
by w8rbt 12y ago
Mac OS9 users created filenames with spaces at the front. They did this for years. Their goal was file sorting. When they wanted a file to sort higher, I believe they simply added more spaces. I've never seen any other computer users do that.
And also, I did not realize that you could create filenames that contained spaces at the front (or back) on Windows systems. In fact, I'm not sure that's ever been allowed on Windows... has it?
About 15 years ago, I had to migrate an entire Mac OS9 office group (200 systems) to Windows PC. I wrote a Python script to validate filenames and fix them in cases where they contained illegal Windows characters. We would ftp the files up to a Unix system, run the Python filename cleaning script then ftp down to the Windows PCs. It worked rather well, except for cases where the accountants named files something like this, "Summer-Report-07/15/1997.csv"
Mac OS9 file names allowed many characters that Windows did not and OSX may have inherited some or all of these things.
- cesarb 12y agoUnix tends to be ridiculously permissive with allowed characters in file names. On Linux, the only disallowed characters are NUL and the slash, and they are only disallowed because they have a special meaning (string terminator and path separator). AFAIK, MacOS X also disallows NUL and slash, but IIRC its GUI silently switches slash (Unix path separator) with colon (which IIRC was the MacOS 9 path separator). So, if you were to migrate to OS X instead of to Windows (and if my knowledge is correct) you'd just have to replace the / with a : and the users wouldn't even notice.
- 0942v8653 12y agoYes. That was for compatibility with os 9—when you copied files over they wanted the names to stay the same so they just switched the / to a : and back again.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> And also, I did not realize that you could create filenames that contained spaces at the front (or back) on Windows systems. In fact, I'm not sure that's ever been allowed on Windows... has it? Just tried it from the command line and, yes, its quite possible on Windows 8.1.