beverly@ai.cs.wisc.edu (Beverly Seavey) (12/15/89)
Some one in our building wants to be able to use special characters in file names in DOS. What is the convention? backslashes, quotes....? I am a UNIX person, so I don't know DOS stuff.
baird@cod.NOSC.MIL (John M. Baird) (12/15/89)
From article <9384@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, by beverly@ai.cs.wisc.edu (Beverly Seavey): > Some one in our building wants to be able to use special characters > in file names in DOS. What is the convention? backslashes, quotes....? See the attached, from the files of HELPSB, a VMS-like DOS help utility. John Baird, Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA USA -------- Filenames can include letters (A through Z) and numbers (0 through 9). "A" and "a" are equivalent in a filename. Other characters such as !, #, $, and _ can be used, but occasionally some program may object. DOS 4.0 users can include many of the international characters in filenames. The DOS special characters listed below should NOT be used. DOS SPECIAL CHARACTERS <Tab> an alternative to <space>. <space> (entered by pressing the space bar) separates the command name, filename, and option fields on command lines. " on command lines, lets <, >, and | be included as part of a string of characters. Normally they are DOS special characters (see below). % replacable parameters and environment variables in BATCH files. * a wildcard character. + COPY command concatenation option , alternative to <space>. Also used by the COPY file reference date update function. . separates a filename from an extension. Also, the current subdirectory. .. specifies the parent directory of the current subdirectory (if any). / specifies an option to a command to cause it to change the way the command behaves or what it does. : separates a disk drive letter from a filename or pathname. ; an alternative to <space> on many commands (but not always). < redirection. = alternative to <space> on many commands (but not always). > redirection. >> concatenation. ? a wildcard character. @ at start of BATCH command line, suppresses display on screen. [DOS 3.3] [ part of escape sequence for PROMPT. Used in documentation with ]. \ separates directory names in a pathname. ] not used but reserved. Used in documentation to indicate options. ^ control character display. In OS/2 only, causes next input character to be treated as text, no matter what it is (escapes normal meaning). | piping. OS/2 SPECIAL CHARACTERS [not used by DOS] & separates multiple commands on a line. && used for conditional execution of commands. ( groups multiple commands on a line. ) groups multiple commands on a line. || used for conditional execution of commands.