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I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

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Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#501

Post by post-it »

biryani_chicken wrote: post #401
0des wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, this makes me wonder.. tangentially speaking- I wonder how hard it would be to rearrange the folder structure in linux so that I have something like this: /Users/{root, user0, user1, ... }... /System/{Logs, Apps/{opt, container, ...}, Temp, Conf ...}... /Devices/{Mount, sda, sdb, null ...}... /Boot/...

You don't even need to rearrange the folders themselves, just show them like that in the file explorer. Same way the windows explorer does.

MacOS too. /usr/ and /dev/ and whatnot exist, they're just flagged as invisible in Finder. There's a command to globally unhide them for those who want to see them.

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#502

Post by 5faulker »

pimterry wrote: post #106

I work on a complex desktop application, and it's been astounding the number of bugs that have appeared over the years triggered by spaces and other unusual characters in file names. If you do anything with subprocesses or path processing, it's absurdly easy to hit in a thousand different ways, over and over again. Pro tip: rename your development directory (or even better: the workspace path in CI) to put a space an…

For those purposes I've found hyphen to be a nice substitute.

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#503

Post by Spivak »

mike_hock wrote: post #491
woodruffw wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: on what systems is `/tmp` persistent? Both macOS and Ubuntu 20.04 clear `/tmp` on every reboot for me, and I haven't changed the defaults at all.

"Persistent Temp" should be /var/tmp. "Persistent Temp" is also an oxymoron.

Basically no one uses /var/tmp for anything (and nobody should either). World writable directories are a mistake and only continue to exist because apps assume they are available.

/tmp and friends are poorly named. They really should be /shared or /dmz or /freeforall or something.

* If you need service-specific tmp space use RuntimeDirectory or PrivateTmp if your app is hardcoded to /tmp.

* If you need service-specific persistent data that goes in /var/lib/your-app.

* If you need temp space for your user it's at /var/run/user/your-uid.

* If you need more than one user/service to share files but not everyone then god have mercy on your soul because all options are bad. There sure are a lot of them but none of them are at all satisfying.

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#504

Post by woodruffw »

tom_ wrote: post #489
woodruffw wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your account the only account that's expected to run the binary? If so, then `$HOME/bin` is a perfectly acceptable (albeit not standard) place to put it. If you expect other users to be able to execute the program, then you should put it in either `/usr/bin` or `/usr/local/bin`, depending on whether the former is already being used by a package manager. `/opt` is generally for self-contained software that doesn't…

I started out using $HOME/bin, but a fair amount of stuff assumes a /usr- or /usr/local-style folder structure when doing make install, so I've settled on using $HOME/usr/bin instead, so that programs can create $HOME/usr/include and $HOME/usr/share and whatever, without trampling on stuff in my home folder. Can't remember the last time I had a problem arranging this. If using autotools, which covers 95+% of stuff, i…

Yeah, it definitely gets hairier when using anything that's more than just a drop-in binary.

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#506

Post by post-it »

tgbugs wrote: post #472
mtift wrote: post #411

I have an overly-aggressive function in my .bashrc to rename all files in the current directory: # Rename all files in a directory rn() { rename "s/ /-/g" * rename "s/_/-/g" * rename "s/–/-/g" * rename "s/://g" * rename "s/\(//g" * rename "s/\)//g" * rename "s/\[//g" * rename "s/\]//g" * rename 's/"//g' * rename "s/'//g" * rename "s/,//g" * rename "y/A-Z/a-z/" * rename "s/---/--/g" * rename "s/-‎--/--/g" * } I use th…

Word of warning from hard experience: rn is a really dangerous thing to name a function because it is one char away from rm.

Looks like it's typically run without any arguments, so it's probably fine.

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#507

Post by spurgu »

tgbugs wrote: post #472
mtift wrote: post #411

I have an overly-aggressive function in my .bashrc to rename all files in the current directory: # Rename all files in a directory rn() { rename "s/ /-/g" * rename "s/_/-/g" * rename "s/–/-/g" * rename "s/://g" * rename "s/\(//g" * rename "s/\)//g" * rename "s/\[//g" * rename "s/\]//g" * rename 's/"//g' * rename "s/'//g" * rename "s/,//g" * rename "y/A-Z/a-z/" * rename "s/---/--/g" * rename "s/-‎--/--/g" * } I use th…

Word of warning from hard experience: rn is a really dangerous thing to name a function because it is one char away from rm.

One char away also physically on the keyboard (maybe that's what you meant?).

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#508

Post by MaxBarraclough »

kibwen wrote: post #128
ModernMech wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kebab case is the often overlooked benefit of prefix notation and semantic white space in programming languages. Honestly the best case of all cases imo.

One glorious day we'll accept programming languages that require spaces around infix arithmetic operators so that we can make kebab case a reality!

Forth does something like this, by virtue of its reverse Polish notation.

In Forth, 'words' (which are roughly analogous to functions and operators) must always be separated by whitespace, as Forth doesn't parse out operators the way most languages do. In exchange, you get the ability to use symbols in identifiers, as Forth has no reason to single out symbols like + as being syntactically special. You can even use a number for the first character. (For that matter, Forth will even let you override the usual interpretation of a numerical literal, but that's always struck me as going a bit far.)

It gives you a + word, analogous to the + operator of most languages [0]. It also gives you a 1+ word, as an (admittedly slight) abbreviation of the sequence 1 +. [1] If you wanted a 2+ word, you could easily define it yourself.

(This property of Forth evidently wasn't enough to get it to take over the world, but it's still neat.)

[0] https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/ansforth-cvs/documen...

[1] https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/ansforth-cvs/documen...

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#509

Post by rch »

jeffwask wrote: post #134
pimterry wrote: post #106

I work on a complex desktop application, and it's been astounding the number of bugs that have appeared over the years triggered by spaces and other unusual characters in file names. If you do anything with subprocesses or path processing, it's absurdly easy to hit in a thousand different ways, over and over again. Pro tip: rename your development directory (or even better: the workspace path in CI) to put a space an…

It doesn't even have to be complex, often basic automation tasks fail with spaces and special characters. Honestly, treating a file system like a natural language processor is a bad idea. Besides at this point with how digital we have all become who can't understand... thisismyconfig.txt vs this is my config.txt or this_is_my_config.txt ...i've forced myself to stop using spaces, character, and even cap. They are all…

I'm similar, but I would like to support labels intended for humans, along with various translations, as metadata on top of e.g. filesystem path components.

Re: I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old

#510

Post by redwall_hp »

pimterry wrote: post #106

I work on a complex desktop application, and it's been astounding the number of bugs that have appeared over the years triggered by spaces and other unusual characters in file names. If you do anything with subprocesses or path processing, it's absurdly easy to hit in a thousand different ways, over and over again. Pro tip: rename your development directory (or even better: the workspace path in CI) to put a space an…

I don't know if it's still a problem, but it used to break Python virtualenv badly. If your working directory had a space anywhere in the path, it would throw a huge fit and not work. Which is problematic when the expected name for a Mac's boot drive is "Macintosh HD" (if you ever had a reason to run a virtualenv outside of your home directory).
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