From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Subject: Re: [9fans] spaces in filenames Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v481) From: Michael Baldwin To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <98980baaa19b1da58bf31a8435a4b978@collyer.net> Message-Id: <48288ED5-7565-11D6-A7FB-000393726A14@orb.sh> Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 09:41:31 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a3ae33ca-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > On Unix, part of the problem is scripts that use $* when they should > use "$@" yeah, so fix them, if it's so easy. are there lots of these around? i haven't noticed. > but the need to quote file names containing spaces interactively is an > on-going nuisance. i guess if you think 'quoting' is a nuisance. yes, you have to quote spaces in shell args. i also have to quote '=' in rc args, and i have to quote ( ) { } * ? and a bunch of other characters. so what? > If you're going to allow spaces, then why not allow tabs? ... why not > newline ... why discriminate against NUL ... because filenames are supposed to be printable "labels" for things. tabs are control characters to adjust the "carriage", like CR and NL are. NUL is a control character. space is just a space, and is thought of as printable. putting spaces in labels is not a radical idea. ever label a paper folder "Mom's recipes"? i don't feel obligated to put an underscore in there instead. and let me tell you, her stuffed peppers are to die for. and i've already said it is very useful to have characters that are guaranteed to be useful as separators. slashes are used for pathname element separation, and for the same reason, it seems a good idea to have a character that always works as an element separator. so stop confusing the issue. i'm talking about space. JUST SPACE. not tab, newline, nul, or slash. i have ALREADY given my reasons for not allowing those (they are non-printable, and it is good to have reliable separators). this is about SPACE ONLY. the only reason you've given to hate spaces is shell sloppiness. we even have the nice new quoted string functions if you want to use them. > We could also adopt another Mac OS tradition, case-insensitive file > names. this is more questionable. but in the case of inferno, which has to live on top of these other systems (windoze does this too), one cannot simply ignore it. "mv A a" on inferno used to delete your poor file "A" instead of move it. oops. and i notice that the shell(s) in mac os x are case-sensitive when using glob matching. > Pretty soon our file names will be as ungodly a stew as anything ever > parsed by MVS or VMS. oh please. allowing the use of space somehow makes filenames a stew? give me a break.