[thelist] cross-platform file names

[Hassan Schroeder]

Fred D Yocum wrote:
> Yes, but why is it bad practice?

Your "young upstart Web master" should read the basic documents of
his chosen trade :-)

<cite>: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax

2.4.3. Excluded US-ASCII Characters

    Although they are disallowed within the URI syntax, we include here a
    description of those US-ASCII characters that have been excluded and
    the reasons for their exclusion.

    ...

    The space character is excluded because significant spaces may
    disappear and insignificant spaces may be introduced when URI are
    transcribed or typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-
    processing programs.  Whitespace is also used to delimit URI in many
    contexts.

    space       = <US-ASCII coded character 20 hexadecimal>
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Aside from that, using any *non-printing* character in a file name
is obviously ambiguous -- is it a space (as above)? a non-breaking
space? a tab, which might look like a space in an HTML context?

Bad idea, all around. IMHO :-)

-- 
Hassan Schroeder ----------------------------- hassan at webtuitive.com
Webtuitive Design ===  (+1) 408-938-0567   === http://webtuitive.com

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