From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <29e804dadceb3ec986adcfb90bd63bd3@collyer.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] blanks in file names
From: Geoff Collyer <geoff@collyer.net>
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Date: Sat,  6 Jul 2002 22:59:57 -0700
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I had thought that one of my sicker ideas was too ridiculous to
suggest, but perhaps not, given the precedent:

A pair of kernel devices (or a single device with an encode or decode
indicator) to translate hURL-encoded file names into plan 9 file
names, and vice versa.  After translation, they are passed to namec.
This lets you use all the glorious botches that have been invented for
hURL (or is it URI?) encoding.

	#:dfile://localhost/my%20file
and
	#:dmy%20file

would map to "my file".  In the presence of a file server that
understands the encoded form, one could do the reverse mapping:
"#:emy file" should probably map to

	my%20file

A further benefit of using the encoded form of names in files is that
programs can then guess fairly reliably which are file names: a field
starting with "file://localhost/" is likely to be a file name.


I'm not seriously suggesting using awful web syntax, but perhaps the
general idea suggests a way forward.