Why ":" is not allowed in file names?

[Chere Zhou]

Thanks for all the response!  Now I put no mangling and hide those files, 
it's not quite working as NTFS.  So I see that it is deep in the file system.

This alternative data stream thing is unknown to me before today.  What a 
learning!


On Wednesday 30 April 2003 04:38 pm, Xyster ! wrote:
> Colons have a special meaning in Windows. They are used as a delimiter
> between a file name and its different streams on NTFS. The filename "hello"
> refers to the default data stream while "hello:mydata" would refer to a
> different data stream.
> To see this behavior you can open a Command Window on an NTFS partition and
> create an alternate stream by typing: "echo my message > hello:mydata".
> This will create a file "hello" in the directory. Typing "more < hello"
> will yield nothing while "more < hello:mydata" will print out "my message".
>
> As far as I know, Samba doesn't support streams so it kills any attempt to
> create them.
>
> Yuval
>
>
>
>
> From: Chere Zhou <qzhou at isilon.com>
>
> >Reply-To: qzhou at isilon.com
> >To: samba-technical at lists.samba.org
> >Subject: Why ":" is not allowed in file names?
> >Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 16:11:02 -0700
> >
> >in reply_ntcreate_and_X at nttrans.c:
> >
> >                         /*
> >                          * Check to see if this is a mac fork of some
> >kind.
> >                          */
> >
> >                         if( strchr_m(fname, ':')) {
> >                                 END_PROFILE(SMBntcreateX);
> >                                 return
> >ERROR_NT(NT_STATUS_OBJECT_PATH_NOT_FOUND);
> >                         }
> >
> >I would like to know why we do not allow ":" in file names?
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Chere
>
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