Funny characters in filenames

[jfw at mit-ccc]

Gee, why don't we just go back to radix-50(8) filenames?  The problem is
not excessive generality (gee, why don't we refer to files by their
filesystem number/inode number), but the poor state of tools which accidentally
create file names that other poorly designed tools cannot handle or mishandle.
File names need not be confusing; Berkeley's `ls' can optionally show
``bizarre'' characters in octal escape form (perhaps, in dumping to tty's,
it should normally do so?); perhaps the shell should accept octal escapes.
(Let us defer the human engineering aspects of /bin/sh for a later date.)

Restricting the operating system to the point where mistakes are impossible
is, I feel, the wrong attitude (ask Kurt Goedel about it, too).  Rather,
let us endeavor to ensure that programs utilize the generality well.  We'll
never eliminate bugs, no matter how few characters are in the space of
file-name characters...