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MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

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Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#121

Post by michaelmrose »

failuser wrote: post #58
air7 wrote: post #21

This backwards compatibility chain reminds me of the age old tale of how rockets are the width of two horses... (1) (1) http://astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html

This is a classic joke, but settling on a common gauge was really difficult, it was not just copying some old Roman standard. There were even riots when different railways started to standardize because common rail gauge meant you can move through the town without engaging with the local economy, see Erie gauge war. Russia still has a wider gauge than Europe and Australia has 3 different ones.

Thanks for the anecdote that was interesting. I think the Erie gauge war demonstrates that people feel entitled to any advantage of circumstances that they have profited from in the past as if such were their property even when the actual matter are issue is in fact others property.

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#122

Post by justsomehnguy »

ChrisSD wrote: post #76
glonq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I create a filename that is long or has spaces, I still pause and worry "okay, what might break if I do this", even though such concerns probably died a couple decades ago. Actually scripts breaking if files or paths have a space in them seems to be a thorn in the side of dev/ops/it folks that never goes away, does it?

On Unix perhaps. Windows forced IT folks to deal with the issue by having folders like "Program Files". Even the user's folder used to be in "Documents and Settings" (but they backed down from that eventually and now it's just "Users").

> but they backed down from that eventually

Only because they were started to hit MAX_PATH there:

    C:\Users\Johnathan Aparecido da Silva\AppData\Local\ASUS\ASUS System Control Interface\AsusSoftwareManager
    C:\Documents and Settings\Johnathan Aparecido da Silva\AppData\Local\ASUS\ASUS System Control Interface\AsusSoftwareManager

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#123

Post by extraduder_ire »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #106
reaperducer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only forbidden for Windows users. I think the only character that Macs don't allow is the colon. AFAIK, everything else is fair game, even emojis. I just created a project with "ê" in the title. I wonder if I'll be able to share that with my Windows coworkers on Teams.

> AFAIK, everything else is fair game, even emojis FWIW, I generally expect emojis to be more compatible than other symbols, because they have no legacy meanings - ex. ™ has never been a path separator, or indeed anything else.

Main problem with "emojis" is that they live outside the basic multilingual plane, and so make bad utf-16 handling really obvious. This is a blessing in disguise, because it acts as a no-brown-m&ms thing, since it's more unarguably broken than not being able to use cuneiform, or musical symbols.

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#124

Post by randomdata »

lol768 wrote: post #5

Does this imply it's writing a file to the fs for its internal storage, with the name matching the channel's name instead of a channel ID?

Could be someone taking DRY a bit too seriously, using validation code that is shared with places where the names do matter.

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#125

Post by WirelessGigabit »

ChrisSD wrote: post #76
glonq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I create a filename that is long or has spaces, I still pause and worry "okay, what might break if I do this", even though such concerns probably died a couple decades ago. Actually scripts breaking if files or paths have a space in them seems to be a thorn in the side of dev/ops/it folks that never goes away, does it?

On Unix perhaps. Windows forced IT folks to deal with the issue by having folders like "Program Files". Even the user's folder used to be in "Documents and Settings" (but they backed down from that eventually and now it's just "Users").

To this date one needs to be careful with executing applications and spaces in the path.

For example:

    D:\test>dir
    ...
    08/10/2023  09:29 AM              .
    08/10/2023  09:30 AM              Foo Bar
    08/10/2023  09:35 AM                79 Foo.bat
    ...

    D:\test>dir "Foo Bar"
    ...
    08/10/2023  09:30 AM              .
    08/10/2023  09:29 AM              ..
    08/10/2023  09:35 AM                79 Foo.bat
    ...
        
    D:\test>type Foo.bat
    @echo off
    echo Executable: %0
    echo Path to executable: %~dp0
    echo Params: %*

    D:\test>type "Foo Bar\Foo.bat"
    @echo off
    echo Executable: %0
    echo Path to executable: %~dp0
    echo Params: %*

    D:\test>Foo.bat hello
    Executable: Foo.bat
    Path to executable: D:\test\
    Params: hello
    
    D:\test>Foo Bar\Foo.bat hello
    Executable: Foo
    Path to executable: D:\test\
    Params: Bar\Foo.bat hello
    
    D:\test>"Foo Bar\Foo.bat" hello
    Executable: "Foo Bar\Foo.bat"
    Path to executable: D:\test\Foo Bar\
    Params: hello

    D:\test>
Mess up the quotes and you're executing something one level up.

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#126

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

tbyehl wrote: post #103
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #73

I sort of get most of these - they're internal to various bits of Microsoft technology. 'CON' plus the ones ending in $ are internal device names dating back to MS-DOS, 'desktop.ini' is a magic file that Explorer uses, '_vti_' is something I've seen but can't remember what it was from. But 'forms'? Why is 'forms' a bad word?

_vti is the mortal enemy of anyone involved in web hosting during the mid-90s to early 2000s. Those are the server-side scripts and configuration for FrontPage, originally developed by Vermeer Technologies Incorporated.

Thank you! That was bugging me, but now that you mentioned FrontPage I clearly recall all of the _vti stuff.

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#127

Post by fredoralive »

Ekaros wrote: post #50
owlninja wrote: post #2

Words: forms, CON, CONIN$, CONOUT$, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9, desktop.ini, _vti_

Now I actually wonder were there ever any machines that had LPT9, COM9 I could barely see.

If you do embedded stuff you can easily get above COM100 if you're doing something like testing (if a USB to serial converter has a serial number, it gets a unique COM port). Although I don't think these high numbers have any effect on the file system, just the legacy low numbered ones DOS could have.

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#128

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

monitron wrote: post #98
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #73

I sort of get most of these - they're internal to various bits of Microsoft technology. 'CON' plus the ones ending in $ are internal device names dating back to MS-DOS, 'desktop.ini' is a magic file that Explorer uses, '_vti_' is something I've seen but can't remember what it was from. But 'forms'? Why is 'forms' a bad word?

I did some quick looking and it seems like SharePoint creates a hidden folder called “forms” to store, unsurprisingly, forms associated with a resource. Aren’t polluted namespaces grand?

Ah, that makes some amount of sense.

But... Why not just call it "_forms" or ".forms", which are already prohibited due to the first character?

Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names

#130

Post by jonny_eh »

elnezah wrote: post #111
jmount wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rode a train in Spain where the train changed gauge at a station!

Spain has a peculiar train gauge. When you cross the border with France, the train slows down and gauge change happens on the fly.

They also have to change sides: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/29i4hq/side_where_...
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