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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

#171

Post by cwkoss »

Roark66 wrote: post #24

Why is it that most "chat/conference" apps become horrible sooner or later? I still remember when teams used to be an OK app. It even had a Linux desktop client. I remember when slack was actually fast, I remember Skype out being more reliable to make phone calls than my mobile/cell service. Today slack is extremely slow if you add few organisations to it (but at least you can add more than one). Teams has deprecated…

> Why is it that most "chat/conference" apps become horrible sooner or later?

To 'become' horrible there has to have been a period where it wasn't. AFAIK that doesn't apply to teams, lol

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

#172

Post by jdwithit »

eastbound wrote: post #43
thefz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> essentially leaking the existence of something terrible inside It's just a restriction imposed on SharePoint folder names bubbling up. Nothing fancy.

Those should obviously be UUIDs. Labels and titles should be a simple changeable, internationalizable attribute. Like usernames. You don’t use usernames as primary keys for anything, do you? What happens when people marry?

Extremely relatable post. I worked someplace that had a policy of absolutely never changing your Active Directory username because it was the primary key in like a dozen internal systems. Someone finally made a massive stink about it to HR when their name had legally changed but IT was forcing them to use their old name (and they were absolutely right to complain. It was a ridiculous policy only in place due to terrible architecture). They still defaulted to telling people no but they did at least document all the highly tedious manual steps necessary to change the name in all affected systems if (when) another employee refused to take no for an answer.

Was certainly a great lesson in schema design, among other things.

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

#173

Post by maerF0x0 »

General tip for structuring user data. Try to treat it as obscure blobs, whenever possible.. Imagine it's encrypted so it's not even printable/human readable.

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

If they have to restrict those because some user input is going straight into their FS, then they mucked up. Probably should have been given a safe ID (perhaps uuid4, perhaps something more like a digest of the channel name instead of using the user input directly.

For me it's a smell when someone says "You cannot use these characters". I automatically think "Why not? You're not using this unencoded or plaintext, right?" eg passwords, or usernames, or content that will show up on a webpage like a comment or such.

This all being said, perhaps it's just an easter egg gone sideways... Perhaps they were just trying to have a bit of fun :)

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

#174

Post by TacticalCoder »

It's bad, ok... But honestly what's the goal? To let people name anything, including the name of a channel, anything they like, like, say:

    "rm -rf /*"
Wait, I've got better: that rm -rf, but written "fr- mr" with RLO left/right overrides.

Surely that is something to aim for because nothing shall ever go wrong?

Thankfully having a file named https://example.org is illegal in Linux (and Windows too right?).

Seriously: is this a problem of you? And if it's a problem, where do you draw the line?

What about codepoint 0? What about Hangul fillers and RLO characters: do you think applications who refuse these do suck?

There are, thankfully, limitation on what filenames can contain. And I think the restrictions aren't anywhere near restrictive enough. Same for usernames, same for channels, same for oh-so-many things.

Does anyone really find it problematic that, say, Twitter only allows visible alphanumeric characters and underscore? (and 15 chars max)

This seems very smart to me. I take that any day over longing for people being able to use poop emojis in their usernames and channels names.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

lostlogin wrote: post #86
reaperducer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're criticizing Microsoft's NTFS, since it cannot use colons, either. CON:? Really? It's not 1974 anymore. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

? No it is not 1974, but not everything is better. Edit: argh, HN deleted the emoticon. Ironic.

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by slaymaker1907 »

reaperducer wrote: post #75
lostlogin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the usual forbidden path and filename characters. It’s pretty irritating when files and folders on my Mac can’t be uploaded to Teams due to this limitation. It’s only forbidden for Windows users.

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.

Yes, and it was an absolutely horrible mistake in the other direction. If I give you a path “./something/example.txt” it could be a file called example.txt in a folder called something or it could be a single file called “something/example.txt”.

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

#178

Post by slaymaker1907 »

hn92726819 wrote: post #161
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.

It looks like non-utf8 is not allowed: https://superuser.com/questions/204287/what-characters-are-f... Maybe it goes without saying, but for completeness, / is not allowed in filenames, and neither is null terminator (0x00 or \0) on mac either. On Linux, only / and null terminator are banned from filenames.

Sadly, you are not correct about slashes. They are allowed in filenames for Macs https://alexwlchan.net/2021/slashes/

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

#179

Post by evouga »

Roark66 wrote: post #24

Why is it that most "chat/conference" apps become horrible sooner or later? I still remember when teams used to be an OK app. It even had a Linux desktop client. I remember when slack was actually fast, I remember Skype out being more reliable to make phone calls than my mobile/cell service. Today slack is extremely slow if you add few organisations to it (but at least you can add more than one). Teams has deprecated…

Because after your lean, highly-productive startup team creates the app that everyone loves, you get a bunch of funding and hire thousands of extraneous software developers and then have to find something for them to do.

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

#180

Post by dylan604 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #174

It's bad, ok... But honestly what's the goal? To let people name anything , including the name of a channel, anything they like, like, say: "rm -rf /*" Wait, I've got better: that rm -rf, but written "fr- mr" with RLO left/right overrides. Surely that is something to aim for because nothing shall ever go wrong? Thankfully having a file named https://example.org is illegal in Linux (and Windows too right?). Seriously:…

I've found it better to use dd to wipe out data than an rf.
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