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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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite is true. You can convert anything to anything at the boundary. The beauty of looser coupling

You can't convert anything to anything at the boundary and still have full interoperability. An example is resource forks on classic MacOS -- they never played nice with an Internet that assumes that files are only a flat stream of bytes.

I think that sounds like an issue of not converting something properly? The problem with converting is that it can be expensive... that's true.

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

#302

I was about to say "Which is essentially leaking the existence of something terrible inside. They should be embarrassed to say something like this in public. Like saying you can't have %s or $PS1. Why the hell not? What are you doing with this user-supplied input?" But maybe it's more about what everyone else might do with a channel name. Ie they might cut & paste it anywhere, and I guess windows users aren't expecte…

Try creating a value in a SharePoint choice column that has ;# in it, and you might not be so certain this isn't being done because MS don't trust their own code.

;# is the Choice column separator value. That restriction makes sense in that context.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they're SharePoint limits, man. Teams is backed by SharePoint and it's not a secret, nor is it embarrassing.

And SharePoint itself is backed by the Windows Filesystem, which respects a lot of old DOS stuff for backwards compatibility.

This is wrong when it comes to content stored in SharePoint, of which resides in content databases or a remote blob storage, but the file names are in guid format, not the source file name, which wouldn’t work for a file of any name and SharePoint due to shredding.

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

#304

I was about to say "Which is essentially leaking the existence of something terrible inside. They should be embarrassed to say something like this in public. Like saying you can't have %s or $PS1. Why the hell not? What are you doing with this user-supplied input?" But maybe it's more about what everyone else might do with a channel name. Ie they might cut & paste it anywhere, and I guess windows users aren't expecte…

> I guess windows users aren't expected to escape their own strings Eh... When did the users of any kind of system start to fit that expectation? And what is that utopia system?

Maybe they do and maybe they don't, but I am certainly expected to deal with whatever the results might be if I paste something into a terminal.

I know there exist terminals and shells that do try to be "helpful" and do auto-escape pastes, but that just breaks things that must not be modified, when the only reason you're pasting is because you need it to be an exact copy without any risk of human typos.

Some are less invasive and just warn when there are included \n before proceeding, but do not presume to munge the data.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on this logic, do we ban everything that is banned somewhere? Surely we can aim higher than the lowest common denominator.

Given the preponderance of 3 major operating systems, I'd think it's sensible for user-level applications to disallow creation of filenames that would cause problems on any of them. Except arguably that could even include using spaces or periods... obviously in an ideal world such restrictions wouldn't exist, but I'm not sure how to realistically push for such a world. E.g. my suggestion would be to reserve non-print…

I suppose I’m actually criticising Microsoft and the backwards compatibility that is now dictating practices due to long gone limitations.

It is painful being forced up update things due to software changing underneath you, but there must be a middle road.

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

#306
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brings back memories. Every LAN group had that one friend like you. I'm sure you made up for it if, like my BSD friend, you were handy with network troubleshooting and always brought spare CAT-5.

Well eventually I just... provided all the machines... and the house... https://kentonshouse.com

No way! The Internet is a small place. I remember seeing your original post and feeling very inspired to do something similar. One of these days I will find some time.

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

#307

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.

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”.

> disallows the ascii slash

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

#308
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brevity forces thought, which I prefer to "Putting a Sentence in a File Name.docx". FORTRAN originally had the same limitation for function names, and that lead to some classics such as GEMM and SAXPY.

When it comes to file names, I disagree that brevity serves a useful purpose. I name my files like I’m an Amazon reseller so that I’m sure to find it with Search later no matter which detail I remember. “Budget Spreadsheet (worked on with Jane) with projections with and without buying a new Tesla Model Y or Chevy Chevrolet Bolt - 2023 2024 2025.xlsx” that’s my idea of a file name.

Modern OSes can search within files for text, which mostly obviates using the filename for keywords.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want the ENTIRE company to be auto added to more than 25 teams?

I don’t want the entire company to be added to any teams. Maybe one. But I think it’s funny that someone said “20 is not enough but 30 is too many.” And then implemented it. Setting such an arbitrary limit so low is what is interesting to me. Fight for an opinion of “none” or “one and only one.” But allowing the hellscape of 25 teams where people accidentally invite all employees to their meeting, but not allowing 10…

And usually when this happens it’s for some weird technical reason, and it almost always is a power of two number. Here it’s just plain weird!

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try creating a value in a SharePoint choice column that has ;# in it, and you might not be so certain this isn't being done because MS don't trust their own code.

;# is the Choice column separator value. That restriction makes sense in that context.

But it doesn't restrict you! You can create a choice field with a value that contains ;# and select it, but then it can't display correctly. Relatively minor bug as bugs go, but still...
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