! is this a bad character for file names?

[conneticat]

I frequently begin important files and folders with "!", such as !filename.pdf. I've been doing this for decades with no problems. Our IT guy believes it will crash our entire LAN-ish shared drive and end the world as we know it, and I was admonished this morning via email. This is not a character that interferes with any language I know of, so what harm could come of it? Is he just being a control freak?!!!!!!

 

[conneticat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename#Reserved_characters_and_words

OK, Wikipedia isn't really the final word, but this is a pretty good basic list.

 

[karlisi]

Working with MS Windows and Novell networks since 1997. Never had a problem with exclamation mark in filenames. If I had such 'control freak' in my job, I would ask him what exact problems he expects.
Perhaps he remembers one special use of ! in Linux. More here

http://www.glindra.org/doc/filename.html

===
Karlis
ECDL; MCSA

 

[conneticat]

Thank you ("!") He doesn "do" Linux, so even that's no excuse. I will print this out and smoosh it under his nose.

 

[jsteph]

Many people assume any non alpha/numeric characters are disallowed in filenames in Windows. I myself still find myself avoiding spaces, ie, naming December_Stats.xls instead of simple December Stats.xls--even though I know the latter is perfectly fine. This goes back to the DOS days, and even the win95 days when using "long filenames" with spaces, etc. was a bolted on kludge and there was still a real 8.3 behind the scenes.

It also goes back to my vb programming when you'd have to surround space-containing filenames with double-double-quotes instead of just double-quotes.

But this guy should know this, and you should ask him why he doesn't. It's one thing to not know--nobody's the all-being-master of time, space and dimension. But it's the condescending, admonishing email part that leaves him open for his comeuppance.
--Jim