Kernel Hacks & Weird Filenames

[John Chambers]

In article <24 at csnz.nz>, paul at csnz.nz (Paul Gillingwater) writes:
> In article <582 at minya.UUCP> jc at minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
> >One of the nice things about Unix is that I can explain to a novice 
> >that the kernel (i.e., open() and exec()) only know about '/' and
> >null, and ALL other characters are equally acceptable. 
> ===========^^^
> >-- 
> >John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)
> 
> Does that mean that a naive user can make a file with a <SPACE>
> in the name?   e.g.   "John Doe" or "Job Cost" or other equally
> "intuitively correct" but WRONG names...:-)

Yes, of course.  A call of open("John Doe",...) wouldn't faze any Unix that
I've worked with.  An frankly, I don't think it is the kernel's business
interfering with such.

The Bourne/C/Korn shell aren't the only Unix user interfaces in the world
any more.  Window/menu-driven shells are becoming quite common.  With such
shells, it is quite reasonable to let users "fill in the blanks" in a menu,
and use what is typed as a file name.  In such cases, there is no good
reason to ban such file names.  On the contrary, they would be intuitively
obvious to a great many users.

Forcing users to use names like "JohnDoe" or "JOHN_DOE" is a computer
silliness that is just that to many non-computer people.  It's about
time we started building software that can accept the names that real
live humans like to use.  "John Doe" is a perfectly good name to most
Americans, and it should be a perectly good name to a sensibly-designed
computer.  Similarly, "T'^Here`^Hse" (where '^H' is a backspace) is a 
perfectly good name to most Frenchmen, and it should be acceptable to 
a computer.

The fact is that Unix accepts such names without complaint.  It's only
the stupid shells that cause problems.  Rather than forcing your naming
rules on the users, why not build shells that accept names that the users
like?  We already have a kernel that does so.

(Ooops; I forgot to say "FLAME ON" a couple of paragraphs back.  Oh, well;
"FLAME OFF". :-)

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

You can't make a turtle come out.
	-- Malvina Reynolds