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Cross platform filepath naming conventions

Jamin Grey · 2012-07-30T01:15:37

Hi, I'm trying to create a set of guidelines for my cross-platform project concerning filepaths and filenames, I startd with Boost Filesystem portabillity guide, but I have some additional questions. First: I mostly only care about Windows XP and Later, Mac OSX and later, and the most common flavors of Linux. Second: What about Android and iOS limitations? Anyone know (without violating any NDAs) about XBox Arcade limitations? Is Windows XP still limited to a max path of 260 characters? What about Windows Vista and beyond? Amongst the common OSes I mentioned, is there any limitation on the size of a single filename or directory name? What is the maximum compatible filename or directory name size? Is there any limitation still on the "depth" of the folders? Am I still limited to 8 folders deep on Mac OSX, WinXP, or major Linux distros? I can go to at least 15 on Windows 7, just glancing at my current directory. [size=2]For fun: [size=2]D:\Jamin\Programming\Projects\AdventureFar\GameClient\Game\Data\World\Areas\Tests\MyTestArea\(-1,2)\Floor\Floor 0\Layers Can I really not have spaces in my path? I can seriously only have 0-9, a-z, A-Z, '_', and '-'? On the common OSes mentioned above, I can't cross-platformly use < >, ( ), or [ ]? What about commas, am I banned from those if I want to be cross-platform? Any help here is much appreciated! Most of the cross-platform filepath articles I find and trying to keep me cross-platform to OSes from before 2000 or so, which doesn't concern my project.

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by Servant of the Lord July 28, 2012 09:21 PM

10 comments, last by Servant of the Lord 11 years, 8 months ago

the_edd

2,109

July 30, 2012 01:00 AM

I very much doubt Linux has a problem with ( and ). One or more shells might interpret them as having special meaning, but that has nothing to do with the filesystem(s) Linux uses. All command shells have such special characters (for which an escaping mechanism is provided). Same for OS X.

The fact that QtCreator doesn't handle these characters correctly is almost certainly a bug (or it too requires escape sequences you are thus far unaware of).

http://www.mr-edd.co.uk
http://bitbucket.org/edd

Servant of the Lord

33,739

Author

July 30, 2012 01:15 AM

It's actually GNU mingw 'make' that was having the problem with parentheses in paths (I had forgotten, it was two weeks ago), which QtCreator runs as part of the compiling process, QtCreator itself handles the filepaths fine. *shrugs*

Hmm, alright, thanks for all the help guys. Looks like it's just the tools that were choking on the symbols, not the OSes themselves. I'll just continue to use parentheses and commas, but will maybe use Zip archives for actual release. I really appreciate the help.

Cross platform filepath naming conventions

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Cross platform filepath naming conventions

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