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Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames: Control Characters (such as Newline), Leading Dashes, and Other Problems

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This article will try to convince you that adding some limitations on legal Unix/Linux/POSIX filenames would be an improvement. Many programs already presume these limitations, the POSIX standard already permits such limitations, and many Unix/Linux filesystems already embed such limitations so it'd be better to make these (reasonable) assumptions true in the first place. This article will discuss, in particular, the three biggest problems: control characters in filenames (including newline, tab, and escape), leading dashes in filenames, and the lack of a standard character encoding scheme (instead of using UTF-8). It also discusses spaces in filenames and shell metacharacters in filenames, including why setting the Bourne shell IFS value to newline and tab is a good idea.

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Unix, Linux, POSIX, filename, file name, filenames, file names, control character, newline, tab, escape, leading dash, leading dashes, leading hyphen, UTF-8, encoding, metacharacter, limits, limitations, fixing, filesystem, newlines in filenames, newline in filename, control characters in filenames, leading hypen, filesystem, file system, space in filename, spaces in filenames, pathname, path name, pathnames, path names

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