Explain me this! angry rant (light hearted)

[alex_boothby]

Why?! With the amazing powers of computer these days and the endless and limitless possibilities of what they can do....Why! Why cant you have a bloody colon in a file name!!!

[~Darkseeker~]

Its just because most operating systems don't accept non-alphanumeric characters in filenames. It just comes from computers read filenames.

[berry120]

...because it's used, in Windows, to determine drives.

Think about it, if I cd (change directory) to C:\Windows and you're allowed colons in file names, how does the computer know whether you want to go to the windows folder in the C drive, or the windows folder which is inside a folder called "C:" in the current directory? It creates ambiguity and therefore can't be allowed without breaking all sorts of things at a fundamental level!

[~Darkseeker~]

Good point well explained thank you Berry. But there must be another reason also, in Mac OS I'm fairly sure that drives aren't identified by colons, but we still can't punctuate our filenames.

[berry120]

True, but then with Windows being so prominent what happens if someone copies said file on MacOS over to Windows? It's just not worth the support queries and easier to prevent people from doing it in the first place.

I think in some Unix / Linux systems it does technically let you, but again it's not recommended since it could create problems.

In short - it's just not worth the hassle of trying to figure out awkward workarounds.

[~Darkseeker~]

anyway, what can a colon provide that a hyphen can't? :P

[alex_boothby]

Thanks for the clarification, i did assume it was due to that. I was just getting its strange due to how user friendly all OS are becoming now you think they would have worked around it to make things such as file naming more aesthetically pleasing. Not slagging them off (i mean i couldn't do it).

Originally Posted by ~Darkseeker~

anyway, what can a colon provide that a hyphen can't? :P

im 100% a colon man..... :P

[FlightSimBoy]

If you were 100 percent a colon, then you'd be full of..... Never mind.

[alex_boothby]

Originally Posted by FlightSimBoy

If you were 100 percent a colon, then you'd be full of..... Never mind.

hahahahah, that was my point!!!

[berry120]

Thanks for the clarification, i did assume it was due to that. I was just getting its strange due to how user friendly all OS are becoming now you think they would have worked around it to make things such as file naming more aesthetically pleasing. Not slagging them off (i mean i couldn't do it).

It's a big topic, but the trend is that OS's are getting more user friendly by essentially hiding the file system and providing layers on top to access it - search, indexes of commonly used files, files belonging to one application etc. The underlying system itself is staying the same. It's really going the same way as the mobile market, the filing system is there as it always has been, but the average user never accesses it directly.