On Sat, 05 Jul 2003 19:09:17 +00, Bastiaan Edelman, PA3FFZ wrote:
> Arachne could not handle a name like that. So, I tried to rename the
> file with Norton Commander. But :-(((
> It looks like this is not an Arachne problem but a DOS problem. A space
> seems to be a non valid character in DOS file-names.
Space is a valid character for DOS filenames at the level of
DOS function calls (i.e., the strings passed to INT 21h can
contain spaces). The problem is at the command line interface,
where spaces work as command parameter separators, e.g.,
REN MY FILE.DOC MY_FILE.DOC
will be interpreted as "rename MY to FILE.DOC" plus some extra
input (unneeded third parameter MY_FILE.DOC). The remedy is to
use double quotes:
REN "MY FILE.DOC" MY_FILE.DOC
But quotes not always work -- it depends on DOS version an on
the command. External programs may support quotes or not. So it's
best to avoid spaces.
BTW, there is similar problem with the forward slash ("/"). DOS
functions accept both "\" (DOS-like) and "/" (Unix-like) path
separators. But on the command line "/" is interpreted as a
command switch character by all DOS commands and many external
programs (these ported from Unix often prefer "-", many accept
both "/" and "-").
Hope this helps,
Michal
