Re: Feature request - base64 Filename Safe Alphabet

[Gabriel Barazer]

On 04/29/2008 4:47:53 PM +0200, Bo Borgerson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Pádraig Brady wrote:
> > tr '+/' '._' => hidden files
> > tr '+/' '-_' => awkward option clashes
> > tr '/' '_' => not POSIX portable

AFAIK, POSIX filenames allow any character except the slash character 
and the null byte.

> > ho hum, the awkward option clashes is probably best.

Especially when this is the RFC recommanded translation. This would 
avoid confusing people with multiple translation sets and stick to the 
RFC (considered by many as the authoritative translation)

> Yeah, there's no really ideal option, is there...

it is very easy to escape a dash character, either manually (the tab key 
makes it very easy with some shells), or in scripts (all languages have 
a shell escape function).

> It almost might be nice to have a totally user-configurable alphabet.

IMHO this is a bad idea because this would confuse even more people 
trying to use it. We could end with dozen of incompatible, non-portable 
shell scripts, with none using the same translation set.

A totally user-configurable alphabet is always possible with "base64 | 
tr" which is designed to do that.

Gabriel