Backslash Key

phpBB3 has been running for ages, surely...anyway php upgrades are pretty thin on the ground at the moment. This forum is upgraded contstantly as the IT dept feel is appropriate.

I doubt the world will suffer much for not being able to see a backslash in a post!

phpBB3 came out in 2007

phpbb2 came out in 2000 I think and that didn't have any problems not allowing certain characters either

Well no it's not he end of the world, but it's bad programming and a PITA when trying to type a filepath.

What forum software is this forum based upon btw?

I wouldn't presume to call it bad programming as there may well be a very good reason for it.

The forum is custom built, but I don't know if it's based on something or not.

There's no good reason to not allow certain characters, but there is good reason to prevent malicious code being run. For example in URL parameters or within BBCode

It's my guess that the forum uses a badly written function to filter out HTML, but it should allow all characters.

I'm trying to find the method the the phpbb forums use to prevent the rendering of html in a post. I did know but I've forgotten. - whoops




Yeah I had a look at the HTML source but can't see any copyright notices for any standard forum code

Just out of interest, does anyone know why and when the powers that be decided to call an oblique a "slash"? Are these the same people who ban us from using a space in our email addresses or website name, when it's a standard ascii character? Line these dim-wits up and shoot them.

Al (angry)

In ISO and unicode it is wrongly called a solidus.
Typesetters have always called it a slash I believe. Only in English grammar is it referred to as an oblique.

Besides www.pentaxuser.co.uk slash forum sounds better than www.pentaxuser.co.uk oblique forum.

Backslashes did exist before 1960 and were introduced to ascii in 1961, according to the fount of all knowledge Wikipedia

Probably the worst thing MS ever did was allow spaces in file names. It causes all sorts of problems with other OS's and quite a lot of Windows programs and you finish up with filenames on websites that look a mess. Parsing the filenames properly is not always possible.

At least they won't allow you to save hidden files that just have names like " " or " " or " " which would make it hard to find malware. (this forum sware is removing several spaces and replacing them with one).

I don't know if Windows would let you change a filename to all spaces with a disk editor?

How many email programs do you think would handle an email address with a space properly? Could they handle emails with double spaces?

Regarding email addresses: read, maybe, the SMTP protocol - it's strongly space-based with information being delineated by a space in many cases. It makes a *lot* of sense not to have spaces there. This article from MS explains some more about how to test SMTP servers: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153119
Try also using Robocopy with something with spaces in - it won't work. It supports the long paths in the filenames, but refuses to accept them on the command line. Spaces are a pain.

Slash is the international word. I don't know anyone outside the UK who uses "oblique". I write for an international audience - it's never an oblique.
Forwardslash as opposed to backslash - no, only Windows users tend to need the distinction, as on *nix the backslash is for escaping characters.

Bret

There's no English word for @ (la petite escargot or something in French)so why bother about what / called

XXCOPY is better than Robocopy and that accepts filenames within spaces on the Command Line. I never exactly tried a file with spaces but wildcards copy them OK. Still be better if they weren't used. The worst one is the "Program Files" dir.

XXCOPY C: D: / CLONE :::: Clones all files C; to D:
(Two backslash chars after C: and D: have been dropped).

It's Italian that calls @ the little snail. French has some other name for it which I forget, but is similar to the Spanish name, which I've also forgotten. In Dutch it is apestaartje - little monkey tail.
In English it has always been called the at, or commercial at.

The English word for @ is at. It's a recognised symbol and word that has been around much longer than computers.

Ha! Ha! You've got it the wrong way round John

@ is an abbreviation for "at" not the other way round
It doesn't describe it and isn't it's name? Most other countries as Gwyn has said have a name for it.

Bored clerks used to add all kinds of nice flowing embellishments to invoices that they used to write and this was one of them.

Pre-computers in the mid 70's I used to buy photographic materials from a wholesalers (Sangers) and there was an old guy called Norman there that used to do the invoices by hand and they were a work of art.... written in biro with a very fancy Copperplate touch. I used to wonder how Sangers put up with the cost of such fancy writing, until I actually saw him write one out he was about twice as fast as I could have scribbled it.

It only survived on the PC because Lotus used it in 123

Whoops, I was thinking of phpBB3.1

Interesting history of the at sign (asperand?) here: http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/whereat.htm

And of course wikipedia has a lengthy entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign

Ampersand = &