[Novalug] question about linux file names

Jon LaBadie novalugml@jgcomp.com
Tue Dec 15 00:36:55 EST 2009


On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 04:32:55PM -0500, Peter Larsen wrote:
> > >
> > > What-ever your $LANG is set to, is the characterset used. I'm not really
> > > aware of "forbidden" characters for file names, except for \0.
> > 
> > I thought you could not put the directory separator / in a file name in 
> > linux.
> 
> Technically that's correct (there are ways but let's not make things
> worse than they are). I thought you were referring to "ding" characters
> or unprintable characters from the old ascii char set. Unix and now
> Linux doesn't care what characters you put into the file. It just sends
> back what it got, which means things can look PRETTY strange sometimes
> when you get filenames with TAB, linefeed etc. inserted into them. Even
> pure spaces is possible. 
> 


Wierdest one I ever intentionally made was .<backspace><space><backspace>

The leading dot prevented listing by simple ls or echo *.

If 'ls -a' or 'echo .*' were used, the <backspace><space> erased the
dot from the screen, but left the cursor one position to the right.
The second <backspace> took care of that.

It was used to hide a file in plain sight from someone who was not
actively looking for it.  It was certainly not robustly hidden.

jl
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon@jgcomp.com
 JG Computing
 12027 Creekbend Drive		(703) 787-0884
 Reston, VA  20194		(703) 787-0922 (fax)



More information about the Novalug mailing list