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Re: [ARSCLIST] Underscore in file names
Mike:
I might be wrong on this but I think that "price in interoperability" is pretty low these days. The
unix varients have been OK with spaces in file names for several years now and any recent version of
the webserver programs should be OK, although sometimes those programs are slower to catch up.
That said, I use underscores out of habit.
I'll tell ya what's dumb -- if underscores are needed for strict ISO adherence, why don't windows
and mac shells give you an option to "replace space bar with underscore automatically when writing
file names". The SAVE-AS command is a shell-level command, as I understand it, so every
standard-interface program is drawing from the same part of the system software to execute, so there
could be a universal option there. Most MP3-creating programs give you the option of spaces or other
characters instead. Some use the dash, some use the underscore, some use more exotic.
By the way, related to all of this, if you're dealing with MP3 files, my favorite organizer of both
file names and tag info is Tag&Rename. It does batches, at the folder level or even more expansive,
and is easy to configure to find and fix all spaces in file names in a given folder, including
subfolders. Good stuff and well worth the $15 or $20 registration since the guy updates it fairly
regularly. He's also got it set to go find all the song info if you just tell it "album X by X is in
folder X." It'll go get all the info for the tags and write proper file names. It'll also auto-write
a play-in-sequence playlist for a folder containing an album's MP3.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Richter" <mrichter@xxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 5:41 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Underscore in file names
Ganesh.Irelan@xxxxxxxx wrote:
For those of you using computer files for archiving, do you use space bar spaces in your file
names or underscores? Is there a reason to avoid space bar spaces in file names?
Yes, there is reason for avoiding spaces in filenames. The underscore is the only punctuation
permitted in strict ISO 9660 naming except for the period which separates the extension. Therefore
it is correctly read and correctly interpreted in all platforms and with all programs. The "space
bar space" is a separator in some filesystems and for some programs. For example, a long filename
may be split at a space when a mail client or other program wraps the line. It can also be
misinterpreted as a hex character in the wrong place, hence appears as "20" in the filename and
lead to a file not being found.
You need not use strict ISO 9660 naming, but variation comes at a price in interoperability.
Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/