From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jan-Benedict Glaw Subject: Re: RFC: Illegal Characters in File Names Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 18:52:06 +0200 Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <20040720165206.GA4690@lug-owl.de> References: <20040720063333.GW2019@lug-owl.de> <20040720162549.857014B7E7@dvmwest.gt.owl.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="ZGiS0Q5IWpPtfppv" Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from dvmwest.gt.owl.de ([62.52.24.140]:16309 "EHLO dvmwest.gt.owl.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266009AbUGTQwI (ORCPT ); Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:52:08 -0400 To: "Joseph D. Wagner" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040720162549.857014B7E7@dvmwest.gt.owl.de> List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org --ZGiS0Q5IWpPtfppv Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, 2004-07-20 11:25:48 -0500, Joseph D. Wagner wrote in message <20040720162549.857014B7E7@dvmwest.gt.owl.de>: > > See, it's only a question of *display*. >=20 > No, it's not. Some programs use file names as input. Placing a > timestamp directly in the file name comes to mind, but I'm sure you > can think of many other examples. Control characters in these file What't wrong with creating a strftime()'d filename? That's still permitted if you allow not-easily-displayable characters. > names would screw-up these programs. While you're going to argue They need to properly check their input. If they don't, they're broken by definition. > that a program should anticipate malformed data, I'm going to argue > that application development will be easier for Linux is programmers > knew that those characters aren't going to be there. Application development with C isn't easy. It needs quite some skills to do The Right Thing (TM). I think that a good program is made up from about some 20% of working code and 80% of error handling. I've seen mission-critical apps that do near-no error checking (including input checking and the like), but you get what you pay for. What do you want to tell all those people that *rely* on being able to store chars < 0x20 in filenames, or > 0x7f ? > Where do most Linux programmers come from? Sure there's the same >>From C land. And those writing good applications already learned the basics. > core of people who have been programming Linux for years, but the > new ones are coming from Windows platforms. Which is easier: to Windows, and previously DOS, allowed for strange filenames, too. > reeducate every single new Linux programmer that any character > could appear in a file name, or to cut out some of the characters > that don't make sense? Ever tried to read a russion DOS floppy disk in a US-english Windows PeeCee? Ever thought about UTF8 or UTF32? These days, you can't even be sure that one char is one displayed character *at all*. ...and while we're hard working (though slowly) getting towards multi-character encodings, you try to propose not using the full 8 bits available per byte? Get real: Some lazy Ex-Windows programmers first need to properly learn programming in the sense of not "make this work", but "make this to never break". You can't trust in anything, except "input *can* actually be even *worse* than this bullshit my customer just showed me." MfG, JBG --=20 Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw@lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481 "Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier B=FCrger" | im Internet! | im Ira= k! ret =3D do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TC= PA)); --ZGiS0Q5IWpPtfppv Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFA/U22Hb1edYOZ4bsRAtDIAJ9Q+XSFmRoaUF0g7RkR+xyIOV2kuACfR1Xf zKQao7NdYwSayAvJ6KRUabI= =tNDl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --ZGiS0Q5IWpPtfppv--