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codethief • last Monday at 3:01 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

In a similar move (silently changing a feature crucial to some users), in Android 11 Google suddenly removed the possibility to use "special" characters

  ":<>?|\*
in filenames[0], presumably because they're not allowed on Windows/NTFS and Windows users might end up struggling to transfer them to their Windows computer. I don't care about NTFS at all, though. I just want to be able to sync all my files with my Linux machines and now I'm no longer able to. Makes me want to scream.

[0]: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/952

Replies

1970-01-01 • last Monday at 8:24 PM

After throwing away that thing you will never use to creating filenames far beyond 8.3 format, the problem always comes soon after the matter is fully resolved:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29186222

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xigoi • last Monday at 3:34 PM

I have a personal convention that all files I put into my synced folder must consist of lowercase alphanumeric characters, hyphens and periods (to be precise, match the regex /\.?([a-z0-9]([-.][a-z0-9])?)+/). It saves a lot of pain.

raw_anon_1111 • last Monday at 3:54 PM

And you don’t see why Google would cater to Windows and a Mac users at the expense of Linux users?

driverdan • last Monday at 5:22 PM

What types of files are you syncing that have those characters in their names?

ThePowerOfFuet • last Monday at 3:10 PM

Putting a star into a filename is a pain in the ass, no matter the OS.

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