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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer,comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Long filenames in DOS/Windows and Unix/Linux
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2024 23:34:22 -0000 (UTC)
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On Sat, 31 Aug 2024 09:27:44 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

> (I’ll be disappointed in extreme cases of course, e.g. filesystems that
> permit ‘/’ in filenames, but the scale of the problem can be minimized.)

The nice thing about Unicode is the alternatives it offers: so you can’t 
use “/” in a filename, but you can use “∕” instead.

> I think the thing that makes it hard is not the spaces as such, but the
> tooling that makes it inconvenient to handle them, which primarily means
> Bourne shell parsing rules. The problem basically ceases to exist once
> you’re outside the shell ecosystem.
> 
> The rest of Unix has evolved substantially since the 1970s but shell is
> still stuck in this particular trap. It’s like we’re still making making
> arrowheads out of flint but everything else from steel.

If you avoid newlines in filenames, Posix shells can cope with anything 
else if you set “IFS=$'\n'”.

If you insist on wanting to accept those as well, then I don’t think Posix 
is enough, but Bash does have facilities that help you cope.