From: "Damian Yerrick" <NOSP AT Musenet@pineight.8m.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp,comp.os.msdos.programmer
References: <82988f$v00$1 AT newsg1 DOT svr DOT pol DOT co DOT uk>
Subject: Re: Weird Characters in Filenames
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Organization: Pin Eight Software <http://pineight.8m.com/>
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 23:12:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 23:12:00 GMT
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

"Ben Davis" <ben AT vjpoole DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk> wrote:
> I'm writing a DO$ game

You include a dollar sign in DOS, implying that your
game won't run on free Lineo DR DOS. Is that true?
http://www.lineo.com/

> and level editor in DJGPP and Allegro. Being DO$, I am
> restricting myself to DO$ 8.3 filenames. You can choose
> your own filenames in the editor (obviously). When the
> user types in a filename, I need to filter out certain
> characters, for example ' ' (space), '.' (dot), '\' (backslash),
> '*' (asterisk) and '?' (question mark), because they have
> special meanings.

I've xposted this to comp.os.msdos.programmer;
they may know more about this.

> There are a lot of characters that I'm not sure about.
> I wondered if someone could tell me _exactly_ which
> characters I should allow the user to type into filenames.

I just tested all ASCII characters from 33 to 126 except
the letters and digits [0-9A-Za-z]. I tried to rename a
small file (using the ren command of the shell Micro$oft
Command) to each character.

M$ Windows Explorer says a long filename cannot contain
\/:*?"<>|

Known OK (checked in M$ Command, and the name
appears as a DOS name):
!#$%&'()@^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{}~

OK in LFN only (checked in M$ Command, and the
name is _~1):
+.[]

Not accepted by M$ Command as a filename:
"*,/:;<=>?\|

> Another thing: do I need to allow for accented letters?

They're legal in DOS, but Micro$oft Windows
Explorer users cannot move or remove any file
named with an above-ASCII (128-255) character.

--
Damian Yerrick
http://yerricde.tripod.com/

My .sig is too long to include in an e-mail or NG message.
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