Message-ID: <46DC4BE4.3090002@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 20:01:08 +0200
From: Florian Pflug <fgp.phlo.org@gmail.com>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Macintosh/20070728)
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To: Trevor Talbot <quension@gmail.com>
CC: Mark Mielke <mark@mark.mielke.cc>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
	Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com>,
	Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>, Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>,
	Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>,
	PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: tsearch filenames unlikes special symbols and numbers
References: <162867790709021328i7771aa9jfe79268bccbf123d@mail.gmail.com>	
	<18259.1188773171@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<87y7foir7t.fsf@oxford.xeocode.com>	
	<19257.1188777110@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<87tzqci6tp.fsf@oxford.xeocode.com>	
	<20070903075609.GD21833@svr2.hagander.net>	
	<1692.1188826039@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<87zm03zwqs.fsf@oxford.xeocode.com>	
	<8195.1188828543@sss.pgh.pa.us> <46DC2024.4010509@mark.mielke.cc>
	<90bce5730709031002r58c8f1d8oece7692da0597ba6@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <90bce5730709031002r58c8f1d8oece7692da0597ba6@mail.gmail.com>
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Trevor Talbot wrote:
> On 9/3/07, Mark Mielke <mark@mark.mielke.cc> wrote:
>> Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Also, ____ says that Windows throws an error for ":" in the filename,
>>> which means we needn't.
> 
>> Windows doesn't fail - but it can do odd things. For example, try:
>>
>>     C:\> echo hi >foo:bar
>>
>> If one then checks the directory, one finds a "foo".
> 
> : is used for naming streams and attribute types in NTFS filenames.
> It's not very well-known functionality and tends to confuse people,
> but I'm not aware of any situation where it'd be a problem for read
> access.  (Creation is not a security risk in the technical sense, but
> as most administrators aren't aware of alternate data streams and the
> shell does not expose them, it's effectively hidden data.)
> 
> If any of you are familiar with MacOS HFS resource forks, NTFS
> basically supports an arbitrary number of named forks.  A file is
> collection of one or more data streams, the single unnamed stream
> being default.

On MacOS (prior) to OSX, : was used as a directory seperator (Paths
looked like "My Harddisk:My Folder:Somefile"). In OSX, "/" is used,
but for backwards-compatibility the Finder translates "/" in filenames
to ":". So, of you do for example "touch 'my:test'" on the shell,
you see "my/test" in the Finder.

Thats another argument for staying away from : in filenames.

greetings, Florian Pflug