Having just an automated autoreplace could result in poor results, esp if not explained to the user... I wonder if functionality could be done to check what the destination filesystem is,and a quick scan of the file names to look for incompatible characters, then provide a dialog with functionality like "Some files contain characters not allowed by the destination file system (FilesystemTypeHere) and cannot be copied as-is. Manually rename the files below, click to allow auto-replacement of characters, or continue operation without those files | /home/clarjon1/BoxOfFilesWithInCompatibleNames | /home/clarjon1/ThatAllowForTheTextToBeCopied | /home/clarjon1/SoUsersCanManuallyReplace | /home/clarjon1/AtTheirDiscretion [Autoreplace] [Ignore Files] [Cancel] If Autoreplace is chosen, a second dialog should appear, that will show the results, so users can note/document what the new file names are, which may be important eg for updating scripts. On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 at 08:06, Alexander Puchmayr <alexander.puchmayr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Am Donnerstag, 5. Jänner 2023, 12:38:50 CET schrieb René J.V. Bertin: > > On Thursday January 05 2023 09:29:43 Alexander Puchmayr wrote: > > >Hi, > > > > > >I just wanted to copy a bunch of files containing various characters like > > >'?' and ':' in their names to an NTFS drive with dolphin, and got lots of > > >errors because of that names. Dolphin does not remove those characters (or > > >offer to do so), the only option you have is abort. > > > > > >Of course, one could do that in a shell using pattern replacement, but the > > >average user, who is not familiar with those bash/aws/sed tricks, will > > >prefer a more convenient way. So is there a way of doing that in Dolphin? > > AFAIK this was always handled at the filesystem driver level, possibly with > > some kind of mapping trick that would allow the user to see the original > > filename from the Unix side. > > > > Obviously, filesystem driver layer does not care about this, it returns an > "invalid argument" if you try to create a file containing a '?' on an ntfs > filesystem. And Dolphin simply seems to forward that error to the UI. > > > But there's also something to say for disallowing this altogether; it's good > > practice to use file names that are valid on all the (file)systems you want > > to use them with... > > > > I don't agree, especially if you do not know in advance that the files on some > filesystem should be ever moved to another file system with different naming > rules. Unix/Linux allows almost all characters, while other OS do not. Other > file systems may have problems with UTF8, so with that argumentations, we > should use DOS compatible 8.3 naming schemes, 7-Bit ASCII only, just do be > sure. > > IMHO, a GUI based user program should be able to handle such cases, as most > users do not care about such restrictions and assume its OK when their primary > OS accepts it. > > Alex > > > >