On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 11:47:34AM -0600, Graeme Humphries wrote:
> stan wrote:
> >> IMO there's nothing intrinsically wrong with any character in a file
> >> name, as long as it makes sense with regards to your naming conventions.
> >> The only difficulty it causes is if your tools can't handle that
> >> character very well. These days, *even* on UNIX, most tools should
> >> handle spaces in filenames just fine.
> >>     
> > Would you include what is the most commonly used program in UNIX (the
> > shell) in that?
> >   
> Certainly. I haven't used a shell in the last couple years that doesn't
> handle spaces in filenames nicely. Which begs the question, what shell
> are you using that's causing you problems? :)

It is not the shell's or any other tool's handling of spaces in filenames
that is the problem.  Unix has always allowed 254 of the 256 possible one
byte characters as valid filename characters.  Once the tool knows a string
is a pathname (Unix filenames are always pathnames) it is simply passed
to the kernel that then deals with it properly.

The problem comes in parsing a multiple token string, the multiple possible
meanings of some chars, and in passing resolved tokens cleanly to the next
function or tool that often repeats the parsing.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
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