At 2025-02-20T15:55:40-0500, Steve Izma wrote: > For what it's worth, I've always abhorred filenames with word spaces > -- they usually require extra consideration in shell scripts and other > programs.
Yes. I remember around 2002 or so when Apple released an iTunes update
that didn't appreciate this fact, with the result that the update,
implemented in part as a shell script, started erasing people's hard
drives. Rock star at work! Apple rushed out a patch. (Crusty old
Unix beard at work.)
I think that experience strengthened their resolve to follow Microsoft
("My Documents", "Program Files") in imposing spaceful file names onto
the Unix world as forcefully as possible.
> I've always thought of filenames as identifiers, not metadata. The
> nature of a file should normally be determined by its full pathname,
> i.e., it's place within a logical hierarchy. If you need to describe
> the content of a file that's not obvious from its pathname, than put
> the description in a metadata file, like README or filecontents, or
> something.
I think we Unix people lost this war, or at least need to write code
that is well-prepared to handle sojourns in foreign lands.
Hence the changes in groff 1.24 aforementioned twice in this thread.
Regards,
Branden
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