Kernel Hacks & Weird Filenames

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <24 at csnz.nz> paul at csnz.UUCP (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. 
>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...:-)

Of COURSE "ALL other" means "ALL other"!  Since a space character
is not '/' and is not a null character, then it is covered by the
phrase.  How hard IS this to figure out?

Not only are such strings as "John Doe" "intuitively correct",
they are useful file names.  Some Bourne, Korn, or C-shell operations
are a bit more difficult to express correctly if some of your file
names contain special characters such as spaces, but that's all.
You shouldn't turn "naive users" loose in such an environment anyway.
Menu-driven applications could well allow these as "natural" file names.

I've found good use for this capability on several occasions.
Your notion of "WRONG" obviously does not fit my needs.