On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 04:03:00PM -0600, Florin Iucha wrote: > On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 03:05:14PM -0600, Ed Wilts wrote: > > Blanks in file names are evil...just pure evil. > > Why_do_you_say_that?_File_names_are_a_part_of_the_user_interface_and_why_should_I_bend_my_eyes_around_the_capabilities_(or_lack_thereof)_of_the_machine/program?_If_the_script_crashed_because_the_file_name_was_longer_than_14_characters_would_you_say_that_to_be_evil_as_well? Because the shell (or other command interpreter) needs to be able to reliably distinguish characters which are part of an argument from those which separate arguments. Given the command rm blackmail letter humans can't reliably determine whether the intent is to delete one file named "blackmail letter" or two separate files named "blackmail" and "letter", so how do you expect something as simple-minded as bash to do so? Filenames exceeding a certain length aren't really comparable, as it's trivial to extend the maximum length and solutions are out there for allowing arbitrarily-long strings, limited only by available memory. Reliable determination of "this space is part of a filename, that space separates filenames" is not readily solvable (and I tend to suspect that it's not solvable at all). -- The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened. - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)