In Windows, you can't put a ? in a file or directory name, because they are reserved characters for PHP GET functions and wildcards. But in Ubuntu, I can. I can name a file lol?.txt and access it properly like any other file. How come you can do this safely in Ubuntu, when you can't in Windows?
1 Answer
The reasoning behind the first statement is false. That is a restriction from the DOS era, well before PHP or even HTTP was born. See the Wikipedia entry:
The long filename system allows a maximum length of 255 UCS-2 characters 3 4 including spaces and non-alphanumeric characters (excluding the following characters, which have special meaning within the COMMAND.COM command interpreter or the operating system kernel:
\ / : * ? " < > |).
Thus it is more of a DOS restriction than a Linux/Unix permissiveness.
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