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posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 24 2017, @06:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the didn't-need-those-folders-anyway dept.

in with a story on Robert Elder Software blog entitled Silently Corrupting an Eclipse Workspace: The Ultimate Prank:

Next time your co-worker asks:

"What's the best way to back up my Eclipse workspace on Windows?"

you can tell them "Just right-click on it and select 'Send to Compressed (zipped) folder' and save the zip file". Unbeknownst to them, you just pulled the ultimate prank by telling them to make a corrupted backup!

          What your friend probably doesn't realize is that the Windows 'Send to Compressed (zipped) folder' utility has a mandatory optional feature to automatically not include certain folders in the archive without telling you. This is a great feature because it demonstrates the excellent sense of humour that the authors of Microsoft Windows have. This feature was no doubt included to allow you to play a variety of hilarious pranks on others by causing them lose data, only to find out about it years later when they want to open the archive and recover it.

The blog post goes on to identify other idiosyncrasies with how Windows mishandles directories whose names start with a period and/or contain Unicode characters.

Reasons you haven't switched to Linux (cont.):

  • 3. Windows has superior development tools.

What other issues have you found with how Windows handles filenames?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by jdavidb on Friday March 24 2017, @07:16PM (4 children)

    by jdavidb (5690) on Friday March 24 2017, @07:16PM (#483805) Homepage Journal

    I think to really get the implication of this story, you have to make it about Windows rather than about Eclipse. Windows has a built-in file compression menu option that is broken because it silently excludes files that are important to some applications, Eclipse being one example. I wonder what else it excludes.

    I'm glad I make most of my compressed files on Windows with gzip under Cygwin, or else 7-zip.

    --
    ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday March 24 2017, @07:19PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 24 2017, @07:19PM (#483808) Journal

    horribledisgustinginhumanporn.jpg->7-zip->compress and send to->Boss's wife

    Thanks 7-zip!

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:40AM (2 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:40AM (#483958)

    I realise it's fun to bash Microsoft over this, but the complaint is really about Windows not handling very Unix-specific filename conventions properly. The reason why Windows is extra careful, possibly excessively so, about how it deals with dot+suffix is because that's the way it does file typing, and has done for about quarter of a century. This happens to interact badly with Unix' "filenames beginning with a dot are hidden". You could just as easily take it in the other direction, if you zip a hidden (attribute +H under Windows) file and unzip it under Unix, it's no longer hidden. Oh noes! Unix is b0rked!

    The issue of it only storing the first dot+filename directory may well be something to do with how Explorer handles these things. I don't know, but the answer is "don't rely on platform-specific semantics of file naming", not "complain when a platform totally unlike your one does things differently".

    (Just for references, I'm a FreeBSD user, so I have no skin in this game, just trying to inject some balance into the debate).

    • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:07AM

      by jdavidb (5690) on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:07AM (#483976) Homepage Journal
      My first computer was an Apple II, and we used the period in filenames just like any other character.
      --
      ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:41AM (#484064)
      <quote>This happens to interact badly with Unix' "filenames beginning with a dot are hidden".</quote>
      Not compressing hidden folders by default seems to be in-line with Window's philosophy. So the bug should be that it's compressing the first one ;).