#1338: Rename Carpet output files -----------------------+---------------------------------------------------- Reporter: eschnett | Owner: eschnett Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Component: Carpet | Version: Resolution: | Keywords: -----------------------+----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by barry.wardell):
Replying to [comment:4 knarf]:
Macs having a much wider audience in our community compared to Windows,
and changing the default for them too would create confusion about what the expected file names of Carpet look like. From what I read the only problem in MacOS is the Finder, which shows colons as slashes but treats them as colons 'under the hood', is this correct? I guess Mac users have to deal with that bug even outside of Carpet (or better, complain to Apple).
'Only' Finder means a lot more than you might think. The implementation is at quite a low level so it also implies every open, save, etc. dialog box and probably most other GUIs. As a general rule, anything that uses Apple's APIs uses slashes and anything UNIX uses colons. Yes, it's a bit of a mess but I don't think this is a bug. It is a deliberate choice in how to handle the transition from older versions of Mac OS in the most backwards compatible way possible.
Does the output work on Macs (I guess so, a lot of people use it)? Do
script that use colons work? If the display in the Finder is the only problem, is this really such a big problem? Did anyone actually complain or file a bug report with Apple?
Yes, it does work in the sense that it doesn't impact me. But I'd imagine it could be very confusing to new users to see the same file with different names depending on the context. For example, in Mathematica you need to use colons with the Import command, but the file browser shows slashes.
Replying to [comment:7 knarf]:
If the current default on Macs is really "a very bad idea", then we
should probably really think about changing it - for all users, which would solve the Windows problem at the same time.
I was really just trying to point out that there are other contexts beyond the "it doesn't work with Windows" case where one might want to avoid colons in filenames.
Both have advantages and disadvantages. Whether to choose a or b mainly
depends on how much of a problem colons are on MacOS, and I am not the right person to be asked that question. So, if you use a Mac and read this: please speak up.
As a general rule I try to avoid colons in filenames as it has caused me headaches in the past. In this particular case it doesn't really bother me since my analysis tools are not affected by the issue. The Windows and Samba problems are much more important reasons.