Guidance on Filenames

This document provides some guidance about file names, and the characters used in them to ensure compatibility between Windows, OSX and Unix systems running CatDV. Each operating system has some characters that are illegal as filename characters.

For complete file name compatibility keep file names to and only A..Z, a..z, 0..9, _ – and one dot . Before the file extension this also means avoiding using any accent or special character from language character sets

For file name compatibility and easy access for OSX, Unix and Windows keep the file names down to 31 characters, Keep total file path lengths down to below 256 characters and limit the characters to only A..Z, 0..9, underscore, hyphen, and dollar sign ($).

Don’t include any OS special characters list below:

‘:’ – Directory separator on MacOS. ” – Directory separator on Windows. ‘/’ – Directory separator on Unix (POSIX) including MacOS X. ‘*’ – Wild card on Unix and Windows. ‘?’ – Wild card character on Windows. ” – Escape character on Unix.

For completeness do not use any of the following either: ? [ ] / = + < > : ; ” ,| *

Try to avoid ANY spaces in names as this could cause problems with command line processing always use an underscore instead e.g.

this is the name of my folder or file = BAD

this_is_the_name_of_my_folder_or_file = GOOD