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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 19:51:53 -0800
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: ":" in filename
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Hiroki Sakagami wrote:

> What happens in the below commands?  The ":" in filenames seems to be
> a problem.  But I don't understand the rule.

The colon is used by NTFS to signify alternate data streams.  You can
google for more information about this, e.g.
<http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs-multiple.htm>.

This means that the colon is not actually part of the filename (since
it's acting as a delimiter), and the filename cannot contain a colon. 
This is a win32 restriction and has nothing to do with Cygwin per se. 
However, if you need to have a filename with a colon in it, you can use
a Cygwin managed mount which works around the problem of characters
forbidden by win32 to exist in filenames.

Brian

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