Kernel Hacks & Weird Filenames

[John Chambers]

> 				...  I realize that this kind of
> behaviour guarantees that I will have a job for a while, but otherwise
> it is pretty silly to allow non-printable characters in a filename.

The problem with this argument is:  Just what is a printable character?

You might have a clear idea while sitting at your ANSI terminal, but try
imagining me sitting at my terminal with lots of special characters for
doing all those funny diacriticals they use over in Europe, and maybe
also a Greek or Katakana character set.  These are added to the usual
ASCII by using the 128 unused codes starting at 0x80.  Or maybe I
have one of the new NLS terminals that put out 2-byte codes for some
characters. 

While you are debating decreasing the usable character set from 7 bits
to 6.7 bits, others (at such insignificant companies as IBM, ATT, etc.)
are working with "8-bit clean" versions of Unix that allow free use of
any 8-bit characters in file names (with '/' and null being special, but
NO others).

You may be part of the "English-only" crowd, but there are lots of us
who aren't, and we badly need those extra character codes.  The fact
that you can't type them on your silly ANSI terminal is of no concern
to us.







-- 
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)