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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: 3, Informative) by HyperQuantum on Friday March 24 2017, @09:24PM (1 child)

    by HyperQuantum (2673) on Friday March 24 2017, @09:24PM (#483876)

    Microsoft .NET has an API to get all files in a specified directory that match some search pattern (Directory.GetFiles(String,String) [microsoft.com]).

    If you try to use it, though, you might encounter the following nasty surprise:

    Note:
    Because this method checks against file names with both the 8.3 file name format and the long file name format, a search pattern similar to "*1*.txt" may return unexpected file names. For example, using a search pattern of "*1*.txt" returns "longfilename.txt" because the equivalent 8.3 file name format is "LONGFI~1.TXT".

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Informative=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 25 2017, @04:25AM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday March 25 2017, @04:25AM (#484025) Journal

    ...that made my soul hurt. I am a worse and sadder person for having read that.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...