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Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:27:54 -0700
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From: Jeremy Hetzler <jeremyhetzler AT mail DOT earthlink DOT net>
Subject: Re: Posible to create filenames with colons?
In-Reply-To: <3EF723AF.9010602@eagercon.com>
References: <000901c33750$8b6f1490$29e0393e AT dck>
 <000901c33750$8b6f1490$29e0393e AT dck>
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At 08:58 AM 6/23/2003 -0700, Michael Eager wrote:

>There are a few packages (Perl for example) which create file names
>with colons.  Windows doesn't like this.

Perl creates no such files, thus Windows does not complain.

>It would be good if Cygwin mapped these into something compatible,
>say, an equal sign.

It would be a disaster. It's much better to accept the limitations of the 
underlying filesystem (and fix broken applications, if there are any) than 
to try and create the illusion that FAT supports characters it doesn't. The 
current strategy is easier to implement, cleaner, less confusing to the 
user, and therefore easier to support.

And there are problems with colon in particular. It has special meaning in 
a Windows path. It is used to delimit unix-style PATHs. Finally, 
"verylong:filename" has a specific meaning on NTFS that is not what you 
might expect.

Please read the archives (as suggested in this thread) and understand the 
issues involved before posting suggestions.

Jeremy




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