WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA (09/13/86)
All the files in our collections which were uploaded as-is from existing collections, such as CPMUG, SIG/M, and PC/BLUE, have some filenames containing "special characters" as far as our TOPS-20 file system is concerned. These characters are not considered "special" by their respective operating systems, but they must be quoted by prefixing a ^V immediately prior to each such character. I have scanned our collections, and the following special characters currently exist in the filenames: & - ampersand @ - at sign / - slash + - plus sign # - pound sign ^ - caret % - percent sign ' - single quote ! - exclamation mark In general, all punctuation characters are considered special. When in doubt, it doesn't hurt to prefix the character with a ^V, except for the period between the filename and filetype. Those of you accessing our collections via FTP have already discovered this ^V prefix requirement. However, those of you accessing our system through ARCHIVE-REQUEST may be wondering why you are getting back "File Not Found" messages. This ^V prefix requirement is part of the reason. The other part is that there is a bug in the runtime library for the version of the C compiler I am using for the server and some of the utilities it uses. The next release should have this fixed and hopefully I will have figured out how to have the server automatically insert the ^V prefix where required so that you need not have to bother remembering to do so. Where that leaves us at the moment is that files with those special characters, especially the slash, imbedded in filenames are currently inaccessible via ARCHIVE-REQUEST. --Frank