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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

#791

Post by ygra »

Izkata wrote: post #162
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…

> Pro tip: rename your development directory (or even better: the workspace path in CI) to put a space and/or special characters in it. A former co-worker changed his name in our auth system to include an apostrophe, so that whenever we handled names wrong he'd find it.

I've used to have a space in my user name and even contemplated to add a bit of non-1252 Unicode. You find a lot of issues, but unfortunately often in tools you have little control over and end up not being able to work effectively at times. It ended up being more frustrating than helpful.

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

#792

Post by ygra »

ridaj wrote: post #195
Izkata wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pro tip: rename your development directory (or even better: the workspace path in CI) to put a space and/or special characters in it. A former co-worker changed his name in our auth system to include an apostrophe, so that whenever we handled names wrong he'd find it.

Áčçëñts hęlp tóø

For anyone curious, this is called Pseudo-localization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudolocalization). I first singled across this in Raymond Chen's blog.

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

#793

Post by Too »

hetspookjee wrote: post #458
alpaca128 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like MS had the same idea according to an answer in the link: > Microsoft intentionally made programs install to C:\Program Files on Windows 95+ to force programmers to deal with spaces in filenames.

I wonder how much global work could have been saved if Microsoft also provided a covered interface for all paths in the system. Not sure if there is any, but one good implementation might save thousands of poor implementations required to handle it.

You have %Appdata% and friends.

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

#794

Post by ygra »

WalterBright wrote: post #693
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…

Sometimes / works as a path separator in Windows, sometimes it doesn't. It's not predictable. I never use / on Windows as a result.

The only common place where it doesn't work is in CMD for executing programs and as arguments for built-in commands. Everything else goes directly to the relevant APIs which don't care about / or \.

These days using CMD instead of PowerShell should be rare enough and PowerShell certainly doesn't mind the slashes.

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

#795

Post by Too »

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…

Why stop there. A computer works more efficiently with numbers rather than strings, so let’s just give each file a number instead of a string. Besides, at this point with how digital we have all become who can’t understand… But wait, that already exists and is called an inode.

A file system has a human interface and a computer interface. Don’t mix them. Let users give file names in whichever way they please.

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

#796

Post by ygra »

idatum wrote: post #565
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…

Somewhat related to injecting unusual characters, in my experience in localization efforts: Inject a Turkish 'I'. I don't know how to type or paste it here, but picture an English lower case 'i' that is upper case. It is a splendid way among many to shake out some loc bugs.

That would only shake out anything if you'd also test in a Turkish locale, wouldn't it? Since Unicode casing rules are locale-dependent and en-US doesn't care much about dotless i or dotted i.

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

#797

Post by Too »

martin-t wrote: post #21
foxfluff wrote: post #17

I'm hardly afraid but I just think it's poor ergonomics. Same as the move from xset m 0 0 to xinput --set-prop 'pointer:Logitech USB Receiver' 'libinput Accel Profile Enabled' 0, 1 Everything seems to be going this way in Linux land. Longer names, harder to type names, camelcase names, spaces... I'm looking forward to an OS that treats command line ergonomics as a first class feature and where camelcase & spaces are…

I find this attitude misguided. More descriptive names are more ergonomic for things you only use rarely but they need to be combined with much better autocompletion than most shells provide by default.

Short option for interactive terminal. Long option in automation.

I’ll be damned if I have to remember or lookup what -n means to some obscure program, when reading someone else’s script. Exception given for super common tools where everybody knows like ls -la.

With the disclaimer that shell scripts, especially ls, aren’t exactly suitable for reliable automation in the first place.

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

#798

Post by ygra »

omnicognate wrote: post #542
martin-t wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this attitude misguided. More descriptive names are more ergonomic for things you only use rarely but they need to be combined with much better autocompletion than most shells provide by default.

Spaces don't make anything more descriptive, they just cause completely unnecessary quoting and escaping hassle. The amount of time that has been wasted by Windows using "C:\Program Files" instead of "C:\Program_Files" far outweighs any highly questionable aesthetic benefit IMO.

On the other hand, how much broken code has been fixed to properly deal with paths just because of that? I'd argue that to be a major benefit. Same with Windows Vista forcing developers to write applications that work properly as a non-admin user.

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

#799

Post by 8bitsrule »

alpaca128 wrote: post #120
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…

Seems like MS had the same idea according to an answer in the link: > Microsoft intentionally made programs install to C:\Program Files on Windows 95+ to force programmers to deal with spaces in filenames.

At one time there was no number 0. Half of binary was missing.

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

#800

Post by 8bitsrule »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #188
apricot wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this point, I'm pretty sure there are people at gnome who compete to see who will make the stupidest suggestion that gets put in production.

It's a Gnomespiracy to determine whether worse is actually better.

Fits right in with COP26. (Could Of Punted?)
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