Folder name ending with a space are… invisibles!

Hi,

in a current project, if a directory name ends with a space it is not displayed in the ListBox ON WINDOWS.

Same application running on OS X displays all found folders (even with an ending space in its name).

Why an ending space in those folder names ?
In the creation process, I have (empty or not) folders where the name of the contents is incomplete (no “book” title, no release date, etc.). These folder contents can be complete or not: it is a work in progress.

For your info:
You run the application,
You drop a folder on the ListBox,
You will get listed names of all folders found in the master folder:

---- _/ \\______ | | | | Master folder (dropped into the ListBox) | | |_____________| | | | |_______> Many Childs of the Master folder *

  • The ListBox displays the name of all those child folders.

AT LAST:
each time I open a folder (Windows runs in VirtualBox), Wndows add these two items in that folder:

Thumbs.db
Thumbs.db/encryptable

invisibles in Windows…

A file/folder name ending with a space is not supported by Windows.
So don’t use them because you may get funny results.

Also on OS X you can get into trouble: iCloud will not synchronize such a folder.

How about beginning the folder names with a dot and removing the dot once it’s completed? On OSX a leading dot is used to set a folder to invisible, but I’m not sure about Windows.

Ulrich:

That is the opposite I want to do.

In fact, I falled into a trap with my names with ending zero ('till I finish the work on the folder).

Eli:
Thank you for your answer. Note that I will not use any Cloud solution (at least in the construction phase, after that…).

Thomas:
All thanks for this information. Do you have a link for valid characters to use for file names ?

Oops – sorry, so I did get you wrong.

Hope this helps more: http://xahlee.info/mswin/allowed_chars_in_file_names.html

ulrich:

Thank you for your answers and link !

You’re welcome. And I found wikipedia much more informative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename#Reserved_characters_and_words