For naming web folders and downloadable files, there's a standard list of characters to avoid, such as blank spaces and things like (&*#$/)|[{, etc. Are there any good reasons to carry those conventions onto your desktop and/or non-web files and folders, even if these are unlikely to be shared on the web? I'd just like to hear some reasons.
Asked
Active
Viewed 22 times
0
-
[Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247.aspx) – IInspectable Jul 13 '16 at 20:51
1 Answers
0
Generally speaking special characters are best to avoid unless you are using them for a reason as some of them tell windows to do specific things with the file. For instance a $ at the end of a share name will make it hidden, / could be ready by some systems as a directory break, * is a wildcard in many programming languages and may cause strange bugs with any program that has to iterate over the files, etc.
Mike Garuccio
- 2,588
- 1
- 11
- 20
-
Thanks for your answer. Is the same true of spaces? The background here is that I'm trying to convince my staff to follow these naming conventions on all folders and files, to avoid potential problems in the future. – Milo Persic Jul 13 '16 at 21:25
-
@sc_props: A space character serves as an argument separator on the command line. When passing a file name as a command line parameter you need to quote spaces. Things break, if you forget to do so. And that is if the code is under your control. If you rely on a tool that cannot deal with spaces in file names, there's nothing you can do (except for using file names without spaces). – IInspectable Jul 13 '16 at 21:56