Author Topic: Upload Filenames: No special characters, please!  (Read 10200 times)

Andrea B.

  • Technical Adviser
  • *
  • Posts: 1671
Upload Filenames: No special characters, please!
« on: June 02, 2016, 18:23:38 »
Hi Everyone -

Recently there were a couple of incidents where a badly named photo file caused the Server software to generate a 500 Internal Server Error. The cause was the inclusion of special characters in an uploaded photo filename.

PLEASE DO NOT USE SPECIAL CHARACTERS IN YOUR PHOTO FILENAMES.
While they may be legal on your laptop, they may not be legal in the forum or server software. I have no way to know the exact list of forbidden special characters. You might find that some work OK in a filename.

Examples:
 
  • ~ ! ? |  \ /
    tilde, exclamation, question, bar, back slash, forward slash
  • ' " ` ; : ,
    single quote (aka apostrophe), double quote, accent, semi-colon, colon, comma
  • @ # $ % & ^ *
    at, number, dollar sign, percent, ampersand, hat, star
  • [ ] { } ( ) < >
    brackets
Spaces are OK here on NG. You may encounter some problems with spaced filenames on some systems.
Dashes, underlines and dots are OK, of course.

Thank you -
Andrea B. as Boffin

She rocks on the Forum all the day long
      Hoppin' and a-boppin' and a-singin' her song.
All the little birds on the Forum Street
     Look to Boppin' Boffin goin' tweet, tweet, tweet.

Boppin' Boffin, bop, tweet. Bop, tweet.
     Boppin' Boffin, bop, tweet......