filename hoopla

[guy at rlgvax.UUCP]

Just out of curiosity, what was considered the difference between characters
with the eighth bit on and characters which weren't printable ASCII (i.e.,
SP to '~')?  Anything more restrictive than that is more trouble than it's
worth, but is there great utility (other than amusement value) of files with
names like "Hi!\007\b\b\bBye!"?  Idiot-proof tools are only usable by the
people they're designed to be proof against, but most sharp tools have blade
guards, just to make sure....  It is, admittedly, harder to deal with files
with 8-bit characters in their names from the various UNIX shells than to
deal with files with control characters (the latter can be quoted, but not
the former), but should the way the various shells are implemented internally
govern a decision as to what file names are considered legal?  Also, the
problem of people hitting the left-arrow key on their terminal (assuming they
don't have a terminal which transmits BS for the left-arrow key) instead of
backspace can be dealt with via the "ctlecho" mode, although suggesting that
the TTY driver should echo control characters as "^<whatever>" would probably
provoke a holy war in itself...

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,mcnc,we13,brl-bmd,allegra}!rlgvax!guy