Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] Icon^M

From: Jan Dockx <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 20:48:18 +0200

At 19:12h +0200 6/5/98, Donald L. Nash wrote:
>--On Wed, May 6, 1998 7:01 AM +0200 "Jan Dockx"
><[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> I am surprised that netatalk does translate a number of diacriticals to
>> hexadecimal ":nn" notation, but leaves something as critical as ascii 13
>> untouched.
>
>Netatalk does only what is necessary to work with the Unix filesystem.  The
>Unix filesystem will happily put any character in the ASCII range 1-127
>other than "/" into filenames.  That includes control characters (except
>NUL, 0), and other nonsense.  However, it will not put any character with
>the high bit set (anything in the range 128-255), into filenames.  Since the
>Mac's funky accented characters are all in that range, netatalk must make
>some provision for representing them.
>
>Any Unix command line program will have problems dealing with ^M simply
>because they'll hardly ever see you type it (they shouldn't have any
>problems dealing with its presence in an already existing filename).  The
>Unix terminal driver translates ^M to ^J on input and you have to put your
>terminal in a special mode to get around it.  "stty -icrnl" works for me on
>Ultrix, but from then on you must be careful to terminate your command lines
>with ^J, since the ^M won't be recognized as a line termination.  "stty
>icrnl" gets you back to normal.
>
>--
>Donald L. Nash, <[email-masked]>, PGP Key ID: 0x689DA021
>The University of Texas System Office of Telecommunication Services

Mmh. In our setup, the unix side of the machine is maintained, together
with a park of other machines of all different makes and models, by a
system group. They use a lot of scripts. These scripts do have problems
with ^M in a file name. For one, at least in linux csh, the CR is
represented as "?" by some commands, "^M" by others, and just invisible or
replaced by a space is something I've seen happen too. Those forms cannot
be used further in a shell script (at least, not without big problems and
changing everything that works now). Just try to get #foreach f in "`find Š
| grep something`"# (you understand what I mean) to work.
I still think that control characters should be mapped too. PC Exchange
does so, by the way ("icon%0d" via Dave/Samba).

And now that we are on the topic, netatalk should "strip" "some" extensions
before presenting a filename to the Mac (and add them from the AppleVolumes
files). We would "win" 4 characters for a filename most of the time. "A
Document.doc" is fine for the unix side, and needed for samba users, but
I'd like to see it as "A Document".

Jan Dockx                      ([email-masked])
K.U.Leuven, Department of Computer Science
Celestijnenlaan 200A / L00.10; 3001 Heverlee; Belgium
tel.: ++ 32/16/32 75 96              fax.: ++ 32/16/32 79 96
+----------------------------------------------------------+
The EROOS Research Group can be contacted through e-mail at
"[email-masked]" or through regular mail at
the address above.
+----------------------------------------------------------+
Wisdom is not beauty ...