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User1
Asked: 2010-12-02 13:16:03 +0800 CST

Are there any invalid characters for an ext3 filename?

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Which characters are invalid for an ext3 filename? I imagine that at least / is an invalid character and probably \0. Is there an official list somewhere?

I'm not exactly sure where to look for this information, so please tell me where you found it.

linux ext3

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Just those two.

    From the wikipedia page on ext3:

    Allowed characters in filenames - All bytes except NULL and '/'

    • 9

  2. / seems to be allowed, at least on ext3 (supposedly in all, ext, ext2 & ext3 at least, likely also ext4) - just try this:

    f='test/file'; echo "Test: '${f}'"
for c in touch ll rm ;do
eval "${c} '${f}'"
done

    That will create "test/file", surprised me too... It will create it, show it with ls command and finally remove it with rm

    You can type it on one line in bash:

    $ f='test/file';for c in touch ll rm ;do eval "${c} '${f}'";done

    So / seems to be (bizerrely) allowed in filenames - probably many tools can get confused with such though...

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