Re: device names - so much escaping

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

On Monday, April 05, 2021 08:36:04 AM Richard Hector wrote:
> On 5/04/21 11:48 pm, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 05, 2021 at 09:29:59PM +1200, Richard Hector wrote:
> >> /dev/vg-backup0/d-rh-rm1-home
> >> 
> >> /dev/mapper/vg--backup0-d--rh--rm1--home
> >> 
> >> Apr  5 07:06:25 backup systemd[1]:
> >> dev-mapper-vg\x2d\x2dbackup0\x2dd\x2d\x2drh\x2d\x2drm1\x2d\x2dsrv.device
> >> : Job
> >> dev-mapper-vg\x2d\x2dbackup0\x2dd\x2d\x2drh\x2d\x2drm1\x2d\x2dsrv.devic
> >> e/start failed with result 'timeout'.
> >> 
> >> But is this all really necessary? Can't these tools work without
> >> assigning special meaning to ordinary characters?
> > 
> > Well, you're asking in the wrong place.  We're just end users here.  If
> > you want the tools to behave differently, you need to get in touch with
> > their respective developers or support forums.
> 
> True, true.
> 
> I guess I was hoping for general comment, whether anyone had insights,
> or agreed/disagreed with me :-)

Uuh, uuh, me -- I can make a general comment ;-)

I'm about 99% sure the tools could be made to work without assigning special 
meaning to ordinary characters.

The thing is that it is usually (almost always in my experience) easier to 
assign some special meaning to a few, hopefully rarely used characters 
(preferably in the ASCII character set (rather than some extended character in 
UTF-8, for example)).

The thing is, if you don't have that special meaning assigned to some fairly 
ordinary characters, you have to create logic in the tool to figure out the 
same thing that is denoted by that special meaning.

Sometimes (rarely, ime) that logic is not too complicated,  But, often it is 
rather complicated (to all of figure out what logic is required, test it, and 
maintain it).

Much easier to give special meaning to a few characters.

Could the developer (or you) choose different characters to assign that meaning 
to -- yes, but you have to pick ones that won't interfere (too much) with 
things like the work habits of other people.

Could you choose extended characters from something like the UTF-8 character 
set?  I suppose so, but, even though UTF-8 is fairly old, it is (1) not used 
everywhere (does it work on the bash command line, for example), and (2) 
requires more effort to recognize.