On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 12:05:55AM +0200, Erich Schubert wrote:
> > I wonder why an underscore cannot be used there. It would be a lot less
> > strange-looking.
>
> And it wouldn't break if the files are transferred over Win32 Systems?
And Mac systems for that matter. : is a path seperator on the Mac. Also
it is valid on the amiga since you generally have device: at the beginning
of a fully qualified path.
MacOS X is weird, / in a name was valid for MacOS 9 and : is valid for
UNIX. So what'd they do? They tr : / when showing files in the GUI and
vice versa.
No, I think : is an unsafe char for files.
> I'm not sure, but i guess one cannot use Colons in Filenames on these?
> Or at least one should avoid them there, shouldn't one?
> (/me doesn't have windows any more, so i cannot test...)
You are correct, : is still forbidden in Win32.
> Maybe it only leads to weird short file names, though... things a user
> shouldn't see anyway...
> C:\NUL\NUL ?
No, the OS just refuses to create a file with that name. Or access it.
Used to be that you could create files with strange characters in the name
with a hex editor and the file could not be messed with by DOS utilities
or anything. More than one expireware thingy installed a hidden, system,
read-only file in C:\ which contained info about when you installed the
thing so they could expire without you being able to know how they knew it
was time to stop working.
Needless to say, they had to get sneakier because it was not terribly long
before tools which _could_ access such files came about. =)
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@bluecherry.net> You want fries with that?
<knghtbrd> is it a sign of mental illness to wander aimlessly through the
start map, collect your Thunderbolt, hop in the pool, and gib
yourself with it just to see your head buouce when it falls
through the bottom of the pool? =>
<knghtbrd> "You know you're a Quake addict when ..."
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