Subject: Pine disallows legal characters in file names

From: Steinar Haug <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1993 13:09:39 +0200 (MET DST)

When I am composing a message and want to use the ^R command to
read in a file, I expect Pine to let me use all legal characters
in the file name I give. Not so. Pine 3.07 just beeps at me if I
try to use one of the following characters:

	!@#$%^&*()`={}[]|\,<?'";:

This is on a Sun, running SunOS 4.1.3.

(My immediate need was for a file name containing '@'...)

Steinar Haug, system/networks administrator
SINTEF RUNIT, University of Trondheim, NORWAY
Email: [email-masked], [email-masked]

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From: "A. Hilborne" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 12:39:53 +0100 (BST)

> try to use one of the following characters:

Yes, this is very annoying.  It seems to be a general feature (wait a
moment...) yes, fallowc() seems to be the culprit.  Any chance of changing
the okinfname[] map in old_growth?  Alternatively 'twould seem more
reasonable under Unix to allow all except control characters and
whitespace in filenames. 

Why do I want to do this?  I use filenames beginning with "," as
temporaries, an old Unix practice...

--
Andrew M. Hilborne                        [email-masked]
Computing Service                    Tel: +44 91 222 8226 (direct)
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.    +44 91 222 8039 (Comp Service office)

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From: Laurence Lundblade <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 09:34:30 -0400 (EDT)

Pine "roots" are showing...  The original intention was to prevent users
from creating files with names that would cause problems later due to
various UNIX features (e.g. files with '*' or '<' in them). 

Seems like a good solution would be to have no restrictions on names when
naming a file for reading, and the current restrictions (perhaps with some
adjustments) for creating files in all but old-growth mode.

LL

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From: Steinar Haug <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 15:40:59 +0200 (MET DST)

> adjustments) for creating files in all but old-growth mode.

That seems like an eminently sensible solution to me. I would be
very happy if this was implemented.