How would I go about creating a filename with invalid characters such as :?> ?

I need to do create a file with a filename such as :>?, is this possible somehow? Windows stops it.

filenames

moorecats

Posted 2010-09-11T17:57:05.830

Reputation: 119

"I need to do create a file with a filename such as :>?" -- I doubt that you need to do that. – Jim Balter – 2017-02-19T03:20:33.467

5Well each restricted character has another meaning or usage, so if a file or folder name did contain them it could cause Bad Things™ to happen. Mind if I ask why you are trying to do this? – DMA57361 – 2010-09-11T18:04:29.640

@DMA57361, when I did this a few years ago, I was testing some things. If I recall correctly, the results were amusing but I don’t recally anything specifically bad happening. At most, I was simply unable to access them. (Though I suppose it could cause trouble if for example, you happened to have files named a, b, and a>b and tried to view the last file as using type a>b. Oops.) – Synetech – 2013-11-30T21:49:09.747

@moorecast, when I did this a few years ago, I made the files/directories with dummy names, then used a disk-editor to manually set the names in the directory entries directly. Of course that was on a FAT32 volume, so it was very easy. It would be a little harder on an NTFS volume. – Synetech – 2013-11-30T21:51:04.033

2Mind if I ask why you are trying to do this? Maybe to implement a (poor) copy-protection? – Synetech – 2013-12-07T05:30:57.640

Answers

Unfortunately, you cannot use the reserved characters when creating folders or files due to them being part of system functions.

What I recommend you do is look through the Character Map application - You can go to run and type charmap.

from here, you may be able to find alternate symbols that look the same, for example:

(copy and paste these, you will see that they are different)

Instead of forward slash / - you can use a division symbol ∕

Instead of Colon : - you can use the modifier letter colon ꞉

and so on!

alt text

William Hilsum

Posted 2010-09-11T17:57:05.830

Reputation: 111 572

Making it even harder to delete! :-) – Arjan – 2010-09-11T18:29:21.947

3@Arjan - only via command prompt.. even then you can use the tab key for autocomplete. – William Hilsum – 2010-09-11T18:49:11.757

4/ is a slash - not a backslash – Paused until further notice. – 2010-09-11T19:12:24.877

@Synetech the question mark is reserved because it is a wildcard character (not only for windows, but *nix systems as well) – PC Luddite – 2018-11-07T03:43:19.547

@PCLuddite, yes, I know; my point is that it is a common punctuation mark, so making it unusable for filenames is a massive PITA. – Synetech – 2018-11-08T04:14:01.730

1I used to use this trick for certain situations like when I need to put a question in a filename (why oh why did Microsoft make the question mark reserved‽ ఠ_ఠ) Unfortunately, I had to stop using any non-ASCII characters because they cause problems with things like defrag programs which for some reason seem to be unable to move files that have Unicode characters in their names. ಠ~ಠ – Synetech – 2013-11-30T22:00:01.070

Come to think of it, this answer doesn’t actually answer the question either. There are answers below that do, so this too should just be a comment. – Synetech – 2013-11-30T22:09:30.323

Some operating systems prohibit some particular characters from appearing in file names: (Resource from Wikipedia)

/ slash used as a path name component separator in Unix-like, Windows, and Amiga systems. (The MS-DOS command.com shell would consume it as a switch character, but Windows itself always accepts it as a separator[2][vague])

\ backslash Also used as a path name component separator in MS-DOS, OS/2 and Windows (there is no difference between slash and backslash); allowed in Unix filename

? question mark used as a wildcard in Unix, Windows and AmigaOS; marks a single character. Allowed in Unix filenames

* asterisk used as a wildcard in Unix, MS-DOS, RT-11, VMS and Windows. Marks any sequence of characters (Unix, Windows, later versions of MS-DOS) or any sequence of characters in either the basename or extension (thus "." in early versions of MS-DOS means "all files". Allowed in Unix filenames,

: colon used to determine the mount point / drive on Windows; used to determine the virtual device or physical device such as a drive on AmigaOS, RT-11 and VMS; used as a pathname separator in classic Mac OS. Doubled after a name on VMS, indicates the DECnet nodename (equivalent to a NetBIOS (Windows networking) hostname preceded by "\".)

| vertical bar designates software pipelining in Unix and Windows; allowed in Unix filenames

" quotation mark used to mark beginning and end of filenames containing spaces in Windows

< less than used to redirect input, allowed in Unix filenames

> greater than used to redirect output, allowed in Unix filenames

. period allowed but the last occurrence will be interpreted to be the extension separator in VMS, MS-DOS and Windows. In other OSes, usually considered as part of the filename, and more than one full stop may be allowed.

subanki

Posted 2010-09-11T17:57:05.830

Reputation: 6 702

You can safely dial down the <bold> hyperbole: it is possible to import files with illegal characters, http://superuser.com/questions/31587.

– hyperslug – 2010-09-11T18:28:40.740

2The question isn’t *why can’t I use some characters in filenames*; it is *how can I force the use of reserved characters*. As such, this answer is an answer to a different question. At most, this should be a comment with a link to the Wikipedia article. – Synetech – 2013-11-30T22:10:01.030

You can boot from a Linux disk (such as Knoppix), and mount the NTFS partition.

Linux has much less restrictions on files names, and will let you create such names (I have tried it).

sleske

Posted 2010-09-11T17:57:05.830

Reputation: 19 887

The only way is to manually edit the hard drive using a program like HxD. If you do this though, most likely the files won't be accessible by any program. For example, if you tried to open a file named abc\def.txt, you'd get a message that the directory abc doesn't exist.

zildjohn01

Posted 2010-09-11T17:57:05.830

Reputation: 2 212

+1 This is how I did a while back. I was easily able to use every single reserved character by directly editing the FAT directory entries. (It’s also possible in NTFS, but slightly more involved.) – Synetech – 2013-11-30T22:05:42.077

You can install the Subsystem for Unix Applications if you're on Ultimate or Enterprise. From there you can create such names.

Joey

Posted 2010-09-11T17:57:05.830

Reputation: 36 381