Hi Jason, On Wed, Jan 15, 2025 at 11:21:02AM -0500, Jason Yundt wrote: > > Makes sense. How about a null-terminated string? > > The term null-terminated string still has some of the problems that I > mentioned earlier. Specifically, people think of null-terminated > strings as sequences of characters. It’s easier to understand how the > kernel handles paths if you think of paths as sequences of bytes, not as > sequences of characters. Hmmm, okay. Maybe I'm too biased as a C programmer, and this being a generic page for users it makes sense to use other terms. > That being said, I think that you misunderstood my two questions. You > told me the current state of things. I’m not asking about the current > state of things, I’m asking about a hypothetical future where programs > started to “assume the Portable Filename Character Set (or at most some > subset of ASCII), and fail hard outside of that”. If we start making > that recommendation and programs start following that recommendation, > then it sounds like I wouldn’t be able to do anything with a large part > of my music collection, You could rename that music into something usable, and then use it. :) > and it sounds like I wouldn’t be able to use the > symbolic links that are in my /dev/disks/by-partlabel directory. Am I > understanding your recommendation correctly? I would be happy in a world where all tools are restricted to the portable filename character set. I once toyed with a patch for enforcing such filenames in the kernel, just for fun. On the other hand, I see the usefulness for others in programs trying to work with other stuff. So the manual page makes sense, and I'll swallow my disagreement. :-) Have a lovely day! Alex -- <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
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