Funny characters in filenames

[jbray at bbn-unix]

From:  James Bray <jbray at bbn-unix>

[Special characters in filenames] sure as heck do cause problems. I was just
talking to someone who was having what appeared to be filesystem problems:
it ended up after a lot of other weirdness that there were apparently two
distinct live entries in a directory with the same name. I od'd the thing
and the mystery became clear: one of them had a mispelling and a couple of
backspaces in it. The victim's .profile had gotten lost somehow, and they
were set up with default characters. I myself would be quite happy if filenames
were as restricted as C identifiers, altho' a lot of stuff would have to be
rewritten... In addition to alphanumerics and underbar, it might be a good
idea to allow a few things like ".+-", and perhaps even "~". But I would
like to see them much more restricted than they are now.
--Jim Bray