Spaces in filenames (was: shell script question)

[John Abreau]

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bscott at ntisys.com writes:

>   That being said, choosing to not put spaces in filenames to work around
> broken software does not thus make spaces bad.  As you've already stated, it
> is the software that is broken.  Sometimes, we have to live with broken
> things.  That doesn't mean we should consider broken things good.  Doing so
> is a sure way to kill progress.

I disagree with the use of the word "broken" here. You could apply these 
same arguments to driving; for instance, we're required to drive on the 
right-hand side of the road, and to come to a stop at red traffic lights. 
While this limits our "freedom" to drive all over the road and run through 
red lights, that's not cause to describe automotive technology as 
"broken".
These are the conventions we use to make driving manageable, just as 
using whitespace to separate words on the command line is a convention 
for managing command-line interaction in Unix. "Broken" is not an 
appropriate word to describe it.


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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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