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Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 04:27:28 -0800
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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Subject: Re: rsync 2.6.9-2 cannot sync file with special long filename
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Michael wrote:

> I assume this is a bug in rsync or bash, and I believe the colon is
> causing the trouble.

You are correct that the colon is the problem, but it is not a bug. 
This is a restriction imposed by the design of Windows -- there are a
number of characters that Windows does not allow in filenames and the
colon is one of them.  You can see a full specification here:
<http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247(VS.85).aspx>

In this case, NTFS reserves the colon to denote alternate data streams. 
There's nothing that rsync or Cygwin can do to change that.

> Does anyone know a workaround? 

You can use a managed mount as a workaround.  This causes Cygwin to
encode characters that Windows won't allow in filenames with a quoted
version.  It only works for Cygwin applications, obviously, as if you
look at the filenames using a non-Cygwin application they will look like
gibberish because of the encoding.  It also shortens the effective
maximum file/path length because each character that is encoded
effectively takes three characters in the real filename.

> If no - is it enough
> to post the bug here, or is there another bug reporting channel for cygwin?

This is the correct place to report problems, but again this is not a
bug.

Brian

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