From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joseph Wagner Subject: RFC: Illegal Characters in File Names Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 19:41:32 -0500 Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <200407181941.32163.theman@josephdwagner.info> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from ssa8.serverconfig.com ([209.51.129.179]:44975 "EHLO ssa8.serverconfig.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263032AbUGSAlj (ORCPT ); Sun, 18 Jul 2004 20:41:39 -0400 Received: from 24-196-33-250.shb.wi.charter.com ([24.196.33.250] helo=[192.168.1.2]) by ssa8.serverconfig.com with asmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1BmMDq-0007nU-L2 for linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org; Sun, 18 Jul 2004 20:41:16 -0400 To: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Content-Disposition: inline List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org IMHO, e2fsck is not sufficiently aggressive in examining a file name for illegal characters. While it is possible to place non-printing control characters in a file name, few (if any) programs support opening a file with control characters in the file name. In fact, 'rm' doesn't even support control characters. To remove such a file, one must substitute a wildcard character and run rm interactively (i.e. 'rm -i'). Some of us in the e2fsprogs project are considering a change which would mark all non-printing control characters (i.e. ASCII <=31 and ASCII == 127) as illegal. I decided not to flag characters > ASCII 127 as illegal in case some day in the future the encoding changes to UTF-8, in which case valid printing non-control characters exist > 127. On the flip side, ASCII and UTF-8 are 100% compatible when <= 127, so the changes I did make will be fine with both. Can anyone suggest a good reason not to good forward with this? If it is OK to go forward, should the kernel be changed to disallow a file name from having these same non-printing control characters? Joseph D. Wagner