On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 12:59:23PM -0700, Joe Zeff wrote: > There was a time that would have been fine in the Microsoft > environment, but it would never have been right under any > Unix/Linux version.
I don't think it has anything to do with the how Unix or Linux treats file names. Craig Bradney's hypothesis that "We probably count to the first . then add .sla or .pdf.." is likely at the core of the problem. If the code stripped off ".sla" from the end of the file name (if present) and then added a ".pdf" suffix, this problem may be resolved. The only restriction Unix and Linux places on characters used in file names is that the null character (which has a binary value of 0) is prohibited. That's because the null character is used in the C programming language (used for interface to the operating system) to terminate the string containing the file name. A filename such as "A. at pdf.)B.sla.C(.pdf.=D.sla" is perfectly legal and utilities should not be sensitive to this ugly mix of characters. Although the operating system tolerates unusual characters, there are utilities in Unix and Linux that may place limits on characters, or treat them in some special way, but one can usually be overcome these limitations by using quotations or special escape characters to cause the utility to treat these characters like all the others. -- Randolph Bentson bentson at holmsjoen.com
