UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Sorry but I have no idea what a shell prompt is (I am indeed a new unix user). I guess you mean a terminal command. So I opened up a Telnet session with my host (I'm just one guy at home on a PC..) and while I did get some info from BSD Reference Manual it presented no info about the question I posed (which characters can't one use in a file/folder name).

Perderabo's telling you everything you need...

To be safe when naming a file or directory:

Stick to names that are 14 characters or less

Stick to letters (a-z, A-Z), numbers (0-9), dot (.), and underscore ( _ )
Avoid characters such as /, *, &, % and spaces.

Here're a couple references:
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/Docs/.../basic_unix.html#2
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/.../index.html (unix tutorial)
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/.../unix4.html (tutorial on filenames)

Perderabo's telling you everything you need.

(he/she did? I read it but I have no idea if we're running HP or what!)

Stick to letters (a-z, A-Z), numbers (0-9), dot (.), and underscore ( _ ). Avoid characters such as /, *, &, % and spaces.

(such as really isn't the detail I was hoping for...I thought a complete list would be an easy request).

Here're a couple references:
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/Docs/.../basic_unix.html#2
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/.../index.html (unix tutorial)
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/.../unix4.html (tutorial on filenames)

(missing the middle parts...)

By "such as" I meant anything with a possible special meaning. I don't have a full list of every possible special character. I'm sure there's some that I don't even know about.

Here's a short list of characters you shouldn't use b/c they often have a special meaning:

!, ^, $, %, &, *, ?, (), {}, [], ", ', `, \, ~, |, ;, &&, ||, <, >, >>

But this may depend on your situation. For example, I can use '~' with no problems.

But trying to create a file with the name a$file results in a file named, simply, a. You can override most of these restrictions by entering a backslash first.

E.G.: creating a file a\$file will result in the backslash stripping the $ of it's special meaning - the name becomes a$file

It's still not recommended though.

Great answer! Thank you!

Maybe its just me, but it looks like everyone here got snookered into answering a homework question.

This person is obviously a serious n00b if they don't know about man pages.

Also, they don't know they rule about not posting or advertising external email addresses for answers.


FYI to all. In general a question like this that is very general and somewhat simplistic, tends to be a classic homework type question.

If this is not actually a homework question, I apologize to Flignar. But it definitely resembles one.

Flignar, please read the forum rules to familiarize yourself. Keep posting questions and by all means take my criticism in the friendly spirit it was intended.


My brain is your brain...