Colon symbol in Directory Name

[Valiant]

I had recorded three episodes of Strike: The Cuckoo's Calling and decided to place them in their own directory so I highlighted one of them and pressed Menu and selected Create Directory, the virtual keyboard is displayed with the name in the edit field so pressing green creates the directory. I then moved the three recordings into the directory, but when I opened the directory no recordings were visible. OpenWebif did not display them either. The files were displayed in Filezilla. I edited the directory name and removed the colon and the files are now displayed as expected. Is the colon symbol a delimiter in Linux? That might explain why the directory could not be found, anyway just a workaround for anyone seeing the same behaviour.

[Andy_Hazza]

Can’t use ‘:’ when creating directories/folders


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[Andy_Hazza]

Instead of colon I used something similar from the Windows Character Map where the dots were like little triangles close up, but from distance looked like dots. That was my workaround.


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[Valiant]

Can’t use ‘:’ when creating directories/folders


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Well I know that now.

Does anyone know why this is a problem?

[Andy_Hazza]

Doesn’t work on Windows either. I’d look at the alternative I suggested above.


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[Valiant]

Doesn’t work on Windows either. I’d look at the alternative I suggested above.


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I'm not sure your solution would work in Vix, far far simpler to just remove the offending colon or replace it with a space.

Obviously, if you are creating a directory by hand, then you should be aware that the colon shoiuld not be used and if you are using the Create Directory command, colons should be removed from file names, along with slashes I expect.

@Birdman will know the answer as to why it doesnt work - maybe a system set delimiter?

[Andy_Hazza]

My workaround looks better than a space, especially if you have a space in the title too. But if you are happy with a space, that is all that matters.


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[ccs]

I think there is a subtle problem with colons in movielist directory names.

Directories and recordings can be created with colons in their name, recordings with colons can be played ok, they can be copied into a folder with a colon in the name, but when you go into the folder, the recording is not shown. Remove the colon from the folder name and the recording is back again.

[ronand]

Yes I noticed that too. I was just using the automatic way of creating a folder while a file name was highlighted in the file browser (its a handy feature btw). It would be nice if colons were stripped when creating the folder name. Its not a big thing as I now know to delete them but I was puzzled as to where my files went after moving them to the new folder.

[birdman]

Is the colon symbol a delimiter in Linux?

The only characters you can't have in a directory entry in Linux are '/' (the directory separator) and NUL (end-of-string marker in C).

[ronand]

The only characters you can't have in a directory entry in Linux are '/' (the directory separator) and NUL (end-of-string marker in C).

So the root of the problem is the file browser/media player?

[birdman]

@Birdman will know the answer as to why it doesnt work - maybe a system set delimiter?

My guess as to why it doesn't work in Vix is because it might be writing this onto an ntfs file system, or a remote file-share where different (probably Microsoft) rules apply. So simpler and safer just to disallow it everywhere.

I have a similar issue with some scripts I use to download Podcasts from the BBC. I make the file-names from the episode titles, but since I then have to copy these onto my 'phone to listen to them (while out walking) I have to cater for the "limitations" of allowed characters on an exfat (Microsoft) file system. Hence this comment in my scripts.

# Need to remove a few annoying/special characters
# Since we intend to move this onto an ExFat partition on a phone
# we need to allow for Microsoft disallowed chars, namely:
#   \/:*?"<>|
# and control chars. Change all to _.
#
nsp_title=`echo $title | tr '[:cntrl:] \/:*?"<>|' '_'

(yes, that also does spaces, but that's for my convenience on a command-line).

[Joe_90]

I believe the colon symbol messes with the PATH setting in linux which uses colons as a separator in directory path names. The process generating the directory names from the file names should probably sanitise the strings to exclude special characters.

[birdman]

I believe the colon symbol messes with the PATH setting in linux which uses colons as a separator in directory path names.

No, that's MS Windows (or the DOS part of it at least). Linux is only interested in '/' as a directory separator.
Actual file-systems (which is more relevant than the OS) may impose additional restrictions.

[Joe_90]

My $PATH variable in linux mint:

~$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin