Subject: Re: make print-PLIST and pkg_add use different quote/escape conventions
To: None <tech-pkg@NetBSD.org>
From: J Chapman Flack <flack@cs.purdue.edu>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 03/14/2005 15:28:12
David Laight wrote:
> Indeed anything that is passed through 'make' had better not have spaces
> (or tabs) in any filenames. Even some of the M$ build tools don't like that!
> 
> Other values to avoid:
>  ':' in directory names - difficult to put in $PATH
>  '\n' - wrecks a lot of stuff
>  '\\' - just to annoy windows users
>  '/' (on windows) to annoy unix users (and programs that accept it as a
>      filename separator)
>  '/' when calling VOP_CREATE() directly

Still more examples of filenames to avoid:

core             may be prone to abrupt disappearance \
*.core           "                                    | from glancing at
a.out            "                                    | /etc/daily
*.o              "                                    |
*.CKP            "                                    |
.emacs_[0-9]*    "                                    |
#*               " (mh)                               |
,*               " (mh)                               |
.#*              "                                    /
TRAILER!!!       can make some cpio implementations exit prematurely

I wonder if anybody's ever tried to draw up a cross-platform anywhere-near-
complete list....

-Chap