Kernel Hacks & Weird Filenames

[Chris Torek]

>In article <11153 at mimsy.UUCP> I wrote:
>>First, `non-printable characters'.  Well, there are certainly numerous
>>characters that cannot be printed on the terminal I am using at the
>>moment (namely my H19).  But this is not precisely the same set as are
>>non-printable on other displays.

In article <4911 at chinet.UUCP> les at chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>How many terminals do anything reasonable with ESC in random places? 

Some of them print `EC' (in one character space, raised E, lowered C).
On those, ESC is a printing character, and if you want to use it in a
file name, that is fine with me.

>>Second: are file names to be printed?  Certainly most are.  But there
>>are some that are not---for instance, the lock files used by ....

>Would you enjoy debugging the operation of said locks if displaying
>the filenames performed random cursor motions or cleared the screen
>before you could see them.

But it does not.  (`ls' prints `?' for control characters; `ls|cat -v'
expands them; other programs have other means of displaying them.)

>It just adds another reason to place some sort of silly user agent
>between the user and the system.

There is *always* a user agent (often more than one) between the
user and the system.  I do not know what you mean here.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris