What characters are allowed in a iOS file name?

Question

I'm looking for a way to make sure a string can be used as a file name under iOS. I'm currently in the section of the code that deletes incompatible characters. I'm wondering if I'm doing it right.

NSString *filename = @"A file name";
fileName = [fileName stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet: [NSCharacterSet controlCharacterSet]];
fileName = [fileName stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet: [NSCharacterSet newlineCharacterSet]];

I'm also wondering if there's already a method that validates a string as a file name.

Thank you for your advice!

In addition to the characters you are already removing, you also cannot use a colon in a filename. — ughoavgfhw, May 23 '11 at 20:19
@ughoavgfhw `nameBase = [nameBase stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: @"/" withString: nil];` `nameBase = [nameBase stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: @":" withString: nil];` — Constantino Tsarouhas, May 23 '11 at 20:25

Abhi Beckert · Answer 1 · 2014-01-04T08:53:00.590

32

Use RegEx:

NSRegularExpression *regex = [NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern:@"[^a-zA-Z0-9_]+" options:0 error:nil];
filename = [regex stringByReplacingMatchesInString:filename options:0 range:NSMakeRange(0, filename.length) withTemplate:@"-"];

edited Jan 04 '14 at 08:53

answered Aug 30 '13 at 06:08

Abhi Beckert

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I believe your first line is missing `options:` after the pattern and before the 0. Otherwise I find this the most elegant answer to the question. – Michael Sep 14 '13 at 14:46
This is a clever and clean solution. – Beleg Jan 04 '14 at 04:28
This is the cleanest approach. I would have accepted as the answer instead? – Rpranata Apr 07 '15 at 03:13

Marián Černý · Answer 2 · 2018-06-29T10:04:47.700

I find this to be cleaner and probably much more performant. This is based on Angel Naydenov's solution, but first constructing Character set with all invalid characters and then calling components(separatedBy:) just once.

Swift 3 & 4

var invalidCharacters = CharacterSet(charactersIn: ":/")
invalidCharacters.formUnion(.newlines)
invalidCharacters.formUnion(.illegalCharacters)
invalidCharacters.formUnion(.controlCharacters)

let newFilename = originalFilename
    .components(separatedBy: invalidCharacters)
    .joined(separator: "")

Swift 2

let invalidCharacters = NSMutableCharacterSet(charactersInString: ":/")
invalidCharacters.formUnionWithCharacterSet(NSCharacterSet.newlineCharacterSet())
invalidCharacters.formUnionWithCharacterSet(NSCharacterSet.illegalCharacterSet())
invalidCharacters.formUnionWithCharacterSet(NSCharacterSet.controlCharacterSet())

let filename = originalFilename
    .componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(invalidCharacters)
    .joinWithSeparator("")

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 14 '12 at 00:09

12

First of all, you're using the wrong method. Trimming the string will only remove characters in the beginning and the end of the string.

What you're looking for is something more like:

fileName = [fileName stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"/" withString:@"_"];

However, that's a suboptimal solution, since you'll have to do that for every character you want to exclude, so maybe you want to keep looking or write you're own method for manipulating the string.

iOS is UNIX based and as such I suppose it supports almost any characters in filenames. UNIX allows white spaces, <, >, |, \, :, (, ), &, ;, as well as wildcards such as ? and *, to be quoted or escaped using \ symbol. However I wouldn't use any of those characters in my filenames. In fact, I would restrict the characters in my filenames to 'a'-'z', '0'-'9', '_' and '.'.

edited Sep 14 '12 at 00:09

David Manpearl

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answered May 24 '11 at 17:39

Erik B

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Thanks a lot! But, if I don't like alphanumeric file names, shall I use then `fileName = [fileName stringByReplacingOccurencesOfString:@"/" withString:@"_"];` `fileName = [fileName stringByReplacingOccurencesOfString:@"?" withString:@"_"];` `fileName = [fileName stringByReplacingOccurencesOfString:@"*" withString:@"_"];` ? – Constantino Tsarouhas May 25 '11 at 13:17
1

For non English, I would restrict the characters to unicode category letter and number. – jjxtra Dec 20 '12 at 05:27
So are emojis _possible_? They're in Unicode. I mean, you can't give worser filenames than emojis, that's clear. But is there just the possibility of giving such filenames? – TobTobXX Apr 19 '18 at 14:06

score 10 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

As I did not see a list with allowed characters in this question but the question wanted a list with such characters I am adding a bit more details on this topic.

First we need to know what is the file system that iOS devices use. Using multiple online sources this seems to be HFSX which is the HFS+ case sensitive version. And including one link here for reference: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/83671/what-filesystem-does-ios-use

Now that we know what the file system is we can look for what characters are not allowed. And these seem to be: colon (:) and slash (/). Here is a link for reference: http://www.comentum.com/File-Systems-HFS-FAT-UFS.html

Having this information and what others have written in this thread my personal preference for removing not allowed characters from file names is the following Swift code:

filename = "-".join(filename.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.newlineCharacterSet()))
filename = "-".join(filename.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.illegalCharacterSet()))
filename = "-".join(filename.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.controlCharacterSet()))
filename = "-".join(filename.componentsSeparatedByString(":"))
filename = "-".join(filename.componentsSeparatedByString("/"))

The reason I am not preferring the RegEx approach is that it seems too restrictive to me. I do not want to restrict my users only to Latin characters. They may as well wish to use some Chinese, Cyrillic or whatever else they like.

Happy coding!

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 27 '18 at 22:27

This String extension (Swift 4.2) will help convert an invalid iOS file name to a valid iOS file name.

 extension String {
    func convertToValidFileName() -> String {
        let invalidFileNameCharactersRegex = "[^a-zA-Z0-9_]+"
        let fullRange = startIndex..<endIndex
        let validName = replacingOccurrences(of: invalidFileNameCharactersRegex,
                                           with: "-",
                                        options: .regularExpression,
                                          range: fullRange)
        return validName
    }
}

For example

"name.name?/!!23$$@1asd".convertToValudFileName()       // "name-name-23-1asd"

"!Hello.312,^%-0//\r\r".convertToValidFileName()        // "-Hello-312-0-"

"/foo/bar/pop?soda=yes|please".convertToValidFileName() // "-foo-bar-pop-soda-yes-please"

this was a perfect solution for me in swift 4.2. I am generating filenames using fields that ended up with special characters in them occasionally, and was failing to generate a valid file name. — Viper827, Feb 14 '19 at 23:19

score 9 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 23 '12 at 13:49

I've had to save remote files locally with filenames containing other characters than basic alpha-numeric characters. I use the method below to strip out potential invalid characters, ensuring it's a valid filename for the filesystem when generating a NSURL using URLWithString:

    filename = [[filename componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@"" ];
    filename = [[filename componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet illegalCharacterSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@"" ];
    filename = [[filename componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet symbolCharacterSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@"" ];
    fileURLString = [NSTemporaryDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:filename];
    fileURL = [NSURL URLWithString:fileURLString];

You may also want to test for collision errors first using:

    [[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:[fileURL absoluteString]]

score 3 · Answer 7 · edited Sep 01 '21 at 03:18

I'm pretty happy with this solution:

NSString *testString = @"This*is::/legal.,?縦書き 123";
NSString *result = [[[testString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[[NSCharacterSet alphanumericCharacterSet] invertedSet]] filteredArrayUsingPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"length > 0"]] componentsJoinedByString:@"-"];

Output:

"This-is-legal-縦書き-123"

What is this sorcery?

Let me break it up into multiple lines so it's clear what's going on:

NSString *testString = @"This*is::/legal.,?縦書き 123";
// Get a character set for everything that's NOT alphanumeric.
NSCharacterSet *nonAlphanumericCharacterSet = [[NSCharacterSet alphanumericCharacterSet] invertedSet];
// Split the string on each non-alphanumeric character, thus removing them.
NSArray *cleanedUpComponentsWithBlanks = [testString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:nonAlphanumericCharacterSet];
// Filter out empty strings ("length" is a KVO-compliant property that the predicate can call on each NSString in the array).
NSArray *cleanedUpComponentsWithoutBlanks = [cleanedUpComponentsWithBlanks filteredArrayUsingPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"length > 0"]];
// Put the components back together and join them with a "-".
NSString *result = [cleanedUpComponentsWithoutBlanks componentsJoinedByString:@"-"];

Enjoy!

Swift 4 Version

Added by john-pang on 2021-09-01 with Swift version:

let testString = "This*is::/legal.,?縦書き 123"
// Get a character set for everything that's NOT alphanumeric.
let nonAlphanumericCharacterSet = CharacterSet.alphanumerics.inverted
// Split the string on each non-alphanumeric character, thus removing them.
let cleanedUpComponentsWithBlanks = testString.components(separatedBy: nonAlphanumericCharacterSet)
// Filter out empty strings ("length" is a KVO-compliant property that the predicate can call on each NSString in the array).
let cleanedUpComponentsWithoutBlanks = cleanedUpComponentsWithBlanks.filter { $0.length > 0 }
// Put the components back together and join them with a "-".
let result = cleanedUpComponentsWithoutBlanks.joined(separator: "_")

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 27 '22 at 11:36

Swift 5 extension:

I wanted to remove emojis as well and in windows \ is also an invalid character. So I added symbols charset and backslash \ as well.

extension String {
    var validFilename: String {
        let invalidCharsets = CharacterSet(charactersIn: ":/\\")
            .union(.illegalCharacters)
            .union(.controlCharacters)
            .union(.symbols)
            .union(.newlines)
        return self.components(separatedBy: invalidCharsets).joined()
    }
}

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 26 '17 at 06:14

I came up with the following solution. Works nice so far.

import Foundation

extension String {
    func removeUnsupportedCharactersForFileName() -> String {
        var cleanString = self
        ["?", "/", "\\", "*"].forEach {
            cleanString = cleanString.replacingOccurrences(of: $0, with: "-")
        }
        return cleanString
    }
}

let a = "***???foo.png"
let validString = a.removeUnsupportedCharactersForFileName()

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 30 '19 at 06:43

Base on Marian Answers, here is a string extension to remove any unwanted characters.

extension String {

func stripCharacters() -> String {
    var invalidCharacters = CharacterSet(charactersIn: ":/")
    invalidCharacters.formUnion(.newlines)
    invalidCharacters.formUnion(.illegalCharacters)
    invalidCharacters.formUnion(.controlCharacters)

    let newString = self
        .components(separatedBy: invalidCharacters)
        .joined(separator: "_")

    return newString
   }
}

Example:
let fileName = "Man(lop23/45"
let newFileName = fileName.stripCharacters()
print(newFileName)