Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!elroy!cit-vax!mangler
From: mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Don Speck)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: FileNames with the high bit set.
Message-ID: <6258@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 24 Apr 88 10:05:30 GMT
References: <8120010@eecs.nwu.edu> <48993@sun.uucp>
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 14
Summary: arbitrary strings could be filenames

One of the beautiful things about the filename syntax of older
Unixes is that there was no such thing as an illegal filename.
Any string had the potential to be a filename, because namei
did something more-or-less sensible with any pattern of slashes
even when there were 0 or >14 characters between them.	Quite
a welcome relief from O.S's with strict punctuation rules, e.g.
    foovax::[000000.mydir.subdir]file.ext;32767

Alas, this changed in 4.2 BSD, and some filenames are now illegal.
Now some propose to add even more restrictions.  It's contagious
and pretty soon we'll be back to all those punctuation rules.

As the TCP people say, "be liberal in what input you accept".

Don Speck   speck@vlsi.caltech.edu  {amdahl,ames!elroy}!cit-vax!speck