Use of Special Characters in Project Name

Ran to an issues with uStn not creating PDF's because of a comma "," in the project name.  Can someone refresh my memory about the special characters not recognized by Microstation??

In the good old days (Unix, NT, XP) only underscore, dash with letters & numbers were allowed.

Steven W.

Win 10 64bit

SS4 08.11.09.829

V8 08.05.02.70

Parents
  • Found the following info during my research.

    Supporting article:

    https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247.aspx

    Digest of the article:

    File names or Path(directory)

        You cannot use the following characters anywhere in a file or path name:

        Tilde (~)

        Number sign (#)

        Percent (%)

        Ampersand (&)

        Asterisk (*)

        Braces ({ })

        Backslash (\)

        Colon (:)

        Angle brackets (< >)

        Less Than (<)

        Greater Than (>)

        Question mark (?)

        Forward slash (/)

        Plus sign (+)

        Vertical bar or Pipe (|)

        Quotation mark (" ')

        Comma (,)

        Semi-Colon (;)

         You cannot use the <NULL> "Space" character at the beginning of a file name or path, NULLS are striped out.

        You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a file name (..)

        You cannot use the period character at the end of a file name (abcde.)

        You cannot start a file name by using the period character (.abcde)

        If you use an underscore character (_abcde) at the beginning of a file name, the file will be a hidden file.

    Steven W.

    CAD Manager

    MPS Engineering Inc

    813-855-2721

Reply
  • Found the following info during my research.

    Supporting article:

    https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247.aspx

    Digest of the article:

    File names or Path(directory)

        You cannot use the following characters anywhere in a file or path name:

        Tilde (~)

        Number sign (#)

        Percent (%)

        Ampersand (&)

        Asterisk (*)

        Braces ({ })

        Backslash (\)

        Colon (:)

        Angle brackets (< >)

        Less Than (<)

        Greater Than (>)

        Question mark (?)

        Forward slash (/)

        Plus sign (+)

        Vertical bar or Pipe (|)

        Quotation mark (" ')

        Comma (,)

        Semi-Colon (;)

         You cannot use the <NULL> "Space" character at the beginning of a file name or path, NULLS are striped out.

        You cannot use the period character consecutively in the middle of a file name (..)

        You cannot use the period character at the end of a file name (abcde.)

        You cannot start a file name by using the period character (.abcde)

        If you use an underscore character (_abcde) at the beginning of a file name, the file will be a hidden file.

    Steven W.

    CAD Manager

    MPS Engineering Inc

    813-855-2721

Children
  • I know for a fact that commas and semicolons are a real headache. That list is impressive, but has many more characters listed than Windows seem to balk at.

    I found the semicolon screws with paths being derived by configuration variables. These (configuration variables) are almost impossible to avoid in MicroStation, so you should never allow a semicolon in a file of folder name.

    The comma is more related to InRoads and with OpenRoads already starting to eclipse InRoads, that issue might eventually be a non issue.

    I'd have to say that following that list of restrictions is certainly not the worse idea I've seen and may actually belong near the top of any list of computer rules.


    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996
  • Keep it simple is the best advice.

    I came across a situation a few years ago when a certain well known OS had allowed the root folder name of a user's entire data structure to start with a space (why would an OS even allow that!!?). That space was hardcoded into all of the links within the CAD application (not MicroStation obviously) and other applications too, thus prevented migration of the projects to the new Windows server. It wasn't viable to relink everything so the old server had to be maintained for the remaining life of those projects. Just because of a space in one folder name!

    Marc