What is the reason why computers are so anal about using ":" or "/" in file names? It makes it out to be a major taboo for Heaven's sake if you decide to put a time in your file name or a proper date because you need those two characters to do that.
What is the worst that could happen if they allow it?
: and \ are used as directory identifiers by computers, and are reserved for that purpose.
For example, C:\ is the command for the root directory of your hard drive, and the \ command identifies different file folders.
The colon is part of the path used in the drive name (your primary hard drive is normally the C: drive, for example, since floppy drives were normally assigned A: and B:). The path begins with the drive name–for example, C:photossquirrel or whatever.
The slash is not allowed because it was already used as a command-line delimiter in several operating systems, including DOS and CP/M. For example, at the DOS command prompt dir /p brings up the listing of the files in the current directory but pauses after each screenful so you can read it. Without the /p it all scrolls by and you can't go back up to read it (well, you COULDN'T in the days of true DOS usage as opposed to the DOS box in current versions of Windows).
The slash is also a directory separator in Unix and Unix-like systems. For example, the path to a particular C code file on my computer is /home/sammi/rsm/main.c (that would be C:\Users\Sammi\rsm\main.c on Windows).
As for writing a date, there's always a hyphen. 2014-05-31.
Or if you wanted to write the date and time, none at all. 20140531101706 is a perfectly valid filename. :)
EDIT: More information on /, : and other characters here: Reserved characters and words (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename#Reserved_characters_and_words)
I can use / in file names without any problem.
Quote from: 1 on May 31, 2014, 10:26:07 AM
I can use / in file names without any problem.
No you can't. If you mean you can do something like
C:/Users/Sammi/rsm/main.c then that's perfectly fine on Windows, but you can't name a folder
2010/2011.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fj3V8veu.png&hash=5f240fc55e9103b812f1bb3ae8e8fe61d0b52e13)
Dammit Windows! It's too much work just to use _or_ instead of a slash!
Quote from: sammi on May 31, 2014, 10:31:25 AM
Quote from: 1 on May 31, 2014, 10:26:07 AM
I can use / in file names without any problem.
No you can't. If you mean you can do something like C:/Users/Sammi/rsm/main.c then that's perfectly fine on Windows, but you can't name a folder 2010/2011.
I use a Mac, and I have named a file 4/25/14, and many others are also like that.
Coding mainly
Quote from: 1 on May 31, 2014, 10:37:33 AM
Quote from: sammi on May 31, 2014, 10:31:25 AM
Quote from: 1 on May 31, 2014, 10:26:07 AM
I can use / in file names without any problem.
No you can't. If you mean you can do something like C:/Users/Sammi/rsm/main.c then that's perfectly fine on Windows, but you can't name a folder 2010/2011.
I use a Mac, and I have named a file 4/25/14, and many others are also like that.
The slash works in Mac for the displayed file name, but the true file name substitutes a colon for the slash. Try renaming another file in the same directory to the exact same name but with a colon instead of a slash- it won't work because that file name would already exist.
OK, so it's a weird Mac thing. :)
This is apparently caused by the two different file systems supported on Macs: Apple's Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+), a successor of the HFS used in Mac OS 9, and the Unix File System (UFS), used in other proprietary Unices (Mac OS X is itself a Unix). HFS+ uses colons as directory separators, which means slashes are allowed in filenames. UFS is the opposite; colons are allowed in filenames.
Because OS X supports both, it needs to transparently transform between the two filename conventions. Which is how it treats / and : as a single character in filenames.
EDIT: A StackOverflow question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13298434/colon-appears-as-forward-slash-when-creating-file-name) regarding slash vs. colon.
Quote from: sammi on May 31, 2014, 10:17:33 AM
....
As for writing a date, there's always a hyphen. 2014-05-31.
....
I use that format in file names all the time. I always use hyphens in dates anyway, never slashes, but when I'm organizing electronic documents for which the date matters I always use the YYYY-MM-DD format because the Windows file manager will then sort in the correct order when sorting by filename (and sorting by date doesn't always work because a document's creation date, if I scanned something, may not match its actual date). If instead you use MM-DD-YYYY (or YY), it will sort all the January documents first regardless of year, etc. (and if you don't use leading zeroes it will mess up the order even more).
If I have multiple documents from the same date I usually assign a letter suffix (e.g., "2014-05-31-a Ethanman motion to post I-366 number," "2014-05-31-b NE2 motion to say yawn," etc.).
Another thing: although the backslash is the normal directory delimiter in Windows, the forward slash is also recognized for that purpose and NT batch commands will parse file paths accordingly.
I usually write day and time expressions in the following ways:
YYYY-MM-DD (if I want to be able to parse the date quickly by eye)
YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS (if I need second precision--usually only when I am running scripts)
None of these is culture-neutral, however; for that you are better off using the Unix epoch. There is a Visual Basic script floating around the Internet, unixepoch.vbs, that can be called in NT batch files. However, it will return the epoch only to the last second, truncating the milliseconds, so if you need the full count of milliseconds for a given application, it is usually enough to autogenerate the last three digits.
Quote from: 1995hoo on May 31, 2014, 03:26:21 PM
I use that format in file names all the time. I always use hyphens in dates anyway, never slashes, but when I'm organizing electronic documents for which the date matters I always use the YYYY-MM-DD format because the Windows file manager will then sort in the correct order when sorting by filename ...
YYYY-MM-DD is an international standard (ISO 8601). It's always how I write dates now too. And it
always sorts correctly.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimgs.xkcd.com%2Fcomics%2Fiso_8601.png&hash=91b07704db40234fac0a97e2af1058ec36ffe98a)
Quote from: 1995hoo on May 31, 2014, 03:26:21 PMI use that format in file names all the time. I always use hyphens in dates anyway, never slashes, but when I'm organizing electronic documents for which the date matters I always use the YYYY-MM-DD format because the Windows file manager will then sort in the correct order when sorting by filename (and sorting by date doesn't always work because a document's creation date, if I scanned something, may not match its actual date). If instead you use MM-DD-YYYY (or YY), it will sort all the January documents first regardless of year, etc. (and if you don't use leading zeroes it will mess up the order even more).
If I have multiple documents from the same date I usually assign a letter suffix (e.g., "2014-05-31-a Ethanman motion to post I-366 number," "2014-05-31-b NE2 motion to say yawn," etc.).
I use a similar scheme when organizing extracts from archival sources, except I hyphenate everything (to avoid whitespace), use lowercase letters and digits only, don't use letter suffixes to segregate same-date material, and use "nd" when a resource can be dated to a year but not a month or day. Example (file MT 95/132 at the UK National Archives):
1942-07-19-perrin-to-cook-on-motorways-issue
1942-07-20-cook-to-perrin-on-motorways-issue
1946-09-09-newcomen-to-hollinghurst-on-layout-standards
1947-07-08-aldington-memo-to-dres-on-cycle-track-policy
1947-10-09-hollinghurst-to-aldington-on-layout-standards
1947-11-06-anon-to-aldington-on-economies-in-design
1947-12-10-hollinghurst-to-newcomen-on-us-highways
1948-01-02-chettoe-to-aldington-on-design-issues
1948-01-02-newcomen-to-aldington-on-nottingham-agenda
1948-01-20-aldington-agenda-for-nottingham-technical-meeting
1948-01-28-aldington-on-points-for-discussion-in-nottingham
1948-01-30-cross-on-nottingham-discussion-points
1948-01-31-chettoe-notes-on-nottingham-items
1948-02-06-verbatim-transcript-of-nottingham-meeting
1948-03-20-draft-minutes-for-nottingham-meeting
1948-04-10-hollinghurst-to-aldington-on-dissemination-of-nottingham-standards
1948-04-27-hollinghurst-to-aldington-on-drakes-traffic-capacity-work
1948-04-29-sinclair-to-aldington-on-d3-roads
1948-05-11-cardell-on-suggestions-for-future-technical-meeting
1948-05-19-dre-circular-dealing-with-nottingham
1948-05-21-correspondence-dealing-with-time-distribution-of-traffic
1948-05-27-minutes-of-followup-technical-meeting
1948-06-02-aldington-on-necessity-of-cycle-tracks
1948-08-27-hollinghurst-on-nottingham-implications-for-road-widths
1948-11-26-hollinghurst-to-hugh-jones-on-nottingham-standards
1948-nd-analysis-of-nottingham-discussion
1948-nd-criteria-for-usa-interregional-highway-system
1948-nd-extract-dealing-with-motorway-design-criteria
1949-05-14-aldington-to-birtchnell-on-nottingham-standards-and-road-widths
1949-05-25-technical-meeting-of-dres
1949-06-21-aldington-memo-on-design-volumes-for-carriageway-widths
1949-08-08-newcomen-querying-alignment-standards-for-three-lane-roads
1949-09-03-bellamy-on-alignment-standards-for-three-lane-roads
1950-04-21-circular-dealing-with-visibility-distances
1950-05-26-county-surveyors-meeting-to-discuss-traffic-estimates
1950-08-18-mot-memorandum-653
1954-11-17-dres-technical-meeting-about-road-design-issues
1954-12-18-correspondence-on-lane-and-carriageway-widths
1955-03-25-hollinghurst-on-unit-lane-widths-and-three-lane-roads
1955-04-04-baker-on-three-lane-roads-and-comments
1955-04-07-stedman-and-oneill-on-three-lane-roads
1955-04-18-boyd-carpenter-on-carriageway-width-issues
1955-05-12-baker-on-grantham-bypass-width-issue
1955-05-19-jeffery-on-grantham-bypass-width-issue
1955-06-01-et-seqq-correspondence-on-carriageway-widths
1955-09-14-meeting-to-discuss-carriageway-widths
1955-nd-coburn-on-safety-of-three-lane-roads
1956-02-22-atk-grant-on-overgenerous-provision-of-dualling
1956-04-30-mot-circular-727
1956-nd-memo-on-growth-of-traffic
1958-08-12-baker-memo-to-dres-on-urban-unit-lane-widths
1959-09-10-mcneil-to-baker-on-suggested-guidance-for-traffic-estimation
I use the letter suffix in part because some courts' implementation of e-filing requires you to file certain things separately even though in paper format it all would have been stapled or binder-clipped together. Rather than uniting it all into one file using my .PDF software I simply assign the letters to keep stuff in the correct order so all documents relating to a particular party's filing stay together instead of being interrupted by someone else's stuff.
I'm sure there are plenty of different ways to do that sort of thing, but this one works well for me because I don't need something as pricey and complex as document management software like iManage or the like.
Before the question is asked: the reason why Windows drive lettering starts at C: is because A: is reserved for the 3½" floppy drive and B: for the 5¼" floppy drive. C: is the hard disk partition Windows is on, then lettering increases with any other hard disks or partitions, then optical drives, then removable drives, etc. Network drives can be mapped to any arbitrary unused letter (it's not uncommon to see them mapped to Z: or a drive letter pertaining to what they contain, like S: for a share drive).
Example: the first computer I ever used was configured like this in 1996: A: and B: floppy drives, C: primary hard drive, D: hard drive partition with my games and stuff on it, E: CD-ROM drive. By the time the computer was decommissioned, the hard drive had been replaced and a CD-RW drive was added: A and B for floppies still, C, D for the old CD-ROM drive that used to be E, and E for the new CD burner.
Unix has little patience for this drive-letter nonsense and displays all drives other than the one the OS is installed on as subfolders of /mnt (or sometimes /media, depending on your OS), usually named after the drive label or device name (such as /mnt/cdrom0).
Quote from: Scott5114 on May 31, 2014, 06:47:12 PM
Unix has little patience for this drive-letter nonsense and displays all drives other than the one the OS is installed on as subfolders of /mnt (or sometimes /media, depending on your OS), usually named after the drive label or device name (such as /mnt/cdrom0).
To expand on that:
An entire folder
/dev on Unix file systems consists of
devices, files which represent physical devices. The hard drives would be listed there as
/dev/sda ...
/dev/sdd, and individual partitions on each one as
/dev/sda1 ...
/dev/sda9. You also have files for floppy drives
/dev/fd0 etc., CD-ROMs as
/dev/cdrom0 etc. and so on for other kinds of devices. Those are, by default, unmounted.
/mnt (or
/media) is a folder for mounting those devices, to allow you to access the data. So you can, for example,
mount a partition
/dev/sda5 containing my school stuff to a folder
/mnt/School. Most GUI *nix systems can automatically do this for you once you connect the device. It reads the volume name, and mounts it to the corresponding folder.
The boot loader automatically loads the boot partition (on my system
/dev/sda1) into the file system's root folder
/. Everything else in the file system is necessarily a subdirectory of this folder.
And those folders can be mounted anywhere. Someone on Windows who wants to store data on a separate drive had to forgo the system generated folders (at least until 7 introduced libraries). On Linux, you'd just delete the system-generated folders and mount the drive to /home/username. You wouldn't even know there were multiple drives involved unless you looked.
Quote from: Scott5114 on May 31, 2014, 06:47:12 PM
Before the question is asked: the reason why Windows drive lettering starts at C: is because A: is reserved for the 3½" floppy drive and B: for the 5¼" floppy drive. C: is the hard disk partition Windows is on, then lettering increases with any other hard disks or partitions, then optical drives, then removable drives, etc. Network drives can be mapped to any arbitrary unused letter (it's not uncommon to see them mapped to Z: or a drive letter pertaining to what they contain, like S: for a share drive).
Example: the first computer I ever used was configured like this in 1996: A: and B: floppy drives, C: primary hard drive, D: hard drive partition with my games and stuff on it, E: CD-ROM drive. By the time the computer was decommissioned, the hard drive had been replaced and a CD-RW drive was added: A and B for floppies still, C, D for the old CD-ROM drive that used to be E, and E for the new CD burner.
Unix has little patience for this drive-letter nonsense and displays all drives other than the one the OS is installed on as subfolders of /mnt (or sometimes /media, depending on your OS), usually named after the drive label or device name (such as /mnt/cdrom0).
Windows drive letters are totally arbitrary from a system perspective and are only used for indexing. One can install Windows on drives other than C. (However, many programs will deem this unacceptable and no longer work) I believe the default drive positions for removable disks can be changed via a registry tweak.
Quote from: roadman65 on May 31, 2014, 09:48:37 AM
What is the reason why computers are so anal about using ":" or "/" in file names? It makes it out to be a major taboo for Heaven's sake if you decide to put a time in your file name or a proper date because you need those two characters to do that.
What is the worst that could happen if they allow it?
You must be using Windows. Windows has it's roots in the DOS which was a command line interface (CLI) where you typed stuff into the keyboard and things happened. Some of those "prohibited" characters have special meaning, such as:
x: - Drive letter
\ - Directory seperater
/ - Command line argument (e.g. dir /w)
< - Input is from a file into a commend (uudecode < filename.txt)
> - Output is to a new file rather than the screen (uuencode filename.txt > output.txt)
>> - Append output to the end of an existing file rather than the screen (uuencode filename.txt >> output.txt)
| - "pipe". The output of one command is to be redirected to another command (dir | more)
* and ? - Wildcards in selecting files. * meets one or more characters, ? means one character only
Trust me, I've seen some *nix script wizards put together some cool long CLI items to accomplish a goal quickly which would take quite a while using a GUI.
Pipes are especially fun, since you can do fun stuff like pipe the random number generator into your speakers for an instant white-noise machine.
Quote from: Scott5114 on May 31, 2014, 11:47:07 PM
Pipes are especially fun, since you can do fun stuff like pipe the random number generator into your speakers for an instant white-noise machine.
I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything
that fun, but I once counted the number of lines in my C code like this:
ls -1 *.{c,h} | grep ^[^j] | xargs cat | grep . | wc -lls -1 *.{c,h} - list all files with extensions
.c or
.hgrep ^[^j] - from that list of files, remove anything that starts with a
j (I didn't want to count some JSON parser code I didn't write)
xargs cat - send
that list of files to
cat, to print the contents of them
grep . - find all the lines in that data with at least one character on them
wc -l - count the number of lines in the resulting data
And it just output:
2289EDIT: As for making white noise, I can tell you this works because I just tried this myself. <_<
cat /dev/urandom | padsp tee /dev/audio > /dev/nullcat /dev/urandom - read randomness
padsp tee /dev/audio - redirect the data to an audio device (I don't know how
padsp works)
> /dev/null -
tee will produce some garbage, so throw it away
Another fun pipe target is espeak --stdin.
Quote from: Scott5114 on May 31, 2014, 06:47:12 PM
Before the question is asked: the reason why Windows drive lettering starts at C: is because A: is reserved for the 3½" floppy drive and B: for the 5¼" floppy drive. C: is the hard disk partition Windows is on, then lettering increases with any other hard disks or partitions, then optical drives, then removable drives, etc. Network drives can be mapped to any arbitrary unused letter (it's not uncommon to see them mapped to Z: or a drive letter pertaining to what they contain, like S: for a share drive).
Example: the first computer I ever used was configured like this in 1996: A: and B: floppy drives, C: primary hard drive, D: hard drive partition with my games and stuff on it, E: CD-ROM drive. By the time the computer was decommissioned, the hard drive had been replaced and a CD-RW drive was added: A and B for floppies still, C, D for the old CD-ROM drive that used to be E, and E for the new CD burner.
Unix has little patience for this drive-letter nonsense and displays all drives other than the one the OS is installed on as subfolders of /mnt (or sometimes /media, depending on your OS), usually named after the drive label or device name (such as /mnt/cdrom0).
Mostly right. A is reserved for whatever is plugged into FDD0 on your motherboard and B is reserved for whatever is plugged into FDD1. It doesn't matter what type of floppy drive it is.
When I name a file which includes the date, I'll keep it short and simple: today is 060114. Yesterday was 053114. Next week is 060814. Easy to see the month, day & year. A typical file name would be "Report 060114".
We could always go back to the era of 8 character file names, and file names without spaces.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on June 01, 2014, 09:25:36 AM
When I name a file which includes the date, I'll keep it short and simple: today is 060114. Yesterday was 053114. Next week is 060814. Easy to see the month, day & year. A typical file name would be "Report 060114".
We could always go back to the era of 8 character file names, and file names without spaces.
I still tend to avoid spaces. There are still instances where they can be problematic, so rather than keep track of which I default to no spaces.
Then again, I go back to the days of "B:? A
second drive?"
Spaces are generally avoided on *nix systems, as far as I know. If you're on the command line, you usually have to type a backslash before the space, e.g.
xpdf /home/sammi/Downloads/PUB\ non-EDSA\ routes.pdf &or just quote it like:
xpdf "/home/sammi/Downloads/PUB non-EDSA routes.pdf" &By default it does the former.
It works similarly on Windows systems, except only the second is allowed. It was a pain in the ass (and it still is sometimes) to type
"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\ ..."
I generally avoid spaces myself for this same reason.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on June 01, 2014, 09:25:36 AM
When I name a file which includes the date, [...] Easy to see the month, day & year.
We were just having a discussion on ISO 8601. :bigass:
Quote from: sammi on June 01, 2014, 10:23:22 AMIt works similarly on Windows systems, except only the second is allowed. It was a pain in the ass (and it still is sometimes) to type
"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\ ..."
I generally avoid spaces myself for this same reason.
Actually, this is not strictly true. The space can be escaped in Windows in much the same way it is in *nix, only the escape character is a caret rather than a backslash, e.g.:
pushd Stargate^ SG-1\Season^ 02However, I have a personal policy of avoiding spaces in filenames I generate myself, partly because they cause all sorts of problems with
findstr and
for /f loops. Compare two text files, with identical content, one called
temp.txt and the other called
I have a space.txt:
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=" %%A IN (temp.txt) DO . . .is semantically identical to
FOR /F "usebackq tokens=1 delims=" %%A IN ("I have a space.txt") DO . . .In the second case, the
usebackq directive is necessary because otherwise the NT command interpreter parses the literal string
I have a space.txt rather than the file with the same name.
In regard to
findstr, some of the standard Windows tricks for dealing with spaces just don't work. Consider a file,
test.txt, containing only the phrase
Therem Harth rem ir Estraven and a CR/LF pair. This command
findstr Therem^ Harth test.txtmight be expected to print the file's single line at the command prompt in its entirety just once, but instead we get this:
FINDSTR: Cannot open Harth
test.txt:Therem Harth rem ir EstravenObviously, in this case
findstr is interpreting
Harth as the name of a file to be searched, rather than as part of the single search phrase
Therem Harth. But putting double quotes around the search phrase does not fix the problem. The command
findstr "boo^ Harth" test.txtmight be expected to produce nothing since the file does not contain the phrase
boo Harth, but instead it produces
Therem Harth rem ir Estravenwhich indicates that the string within the double quotes is interpreted as two separate search phrases and
findstr returns an "or" rather than "and" match.
There is really no way around these problems short of using the
/c switch, so when single words and phrases with spaces have to be mixed in
findstr input, it is quite fortunate that
findstr allows multiple instances of
/c.
Quote from: J N Winkler on June 01, 2014, 12:19:42 PM
Actually, this is not strictly true. The space can be escaped in Windows in much the same way it is in *nix, only the escape character is a caret rather than a backslash [...]
I did not know that. All the more reason for me to use the Cygwin shell instead of CMD. :)
Ah, interesting. A: and B: were set up as I described above in my computer back when 5¼" floppies were still around. What happened if you had 3 floppy drives (not sure why you would, but...)?
I kind of miss floppy disks. If only they had a capacity similar to modern flash drives...
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 01, 2014, 01:58:51 PM
I kind of miss floppy disks. If only they had a capacity similar to modern flash drives...
I've actually used floppy disks myself. The first one I used was 6 years ago; on it was an Excel file for a statistics project, which got corrupted because the computers at school had viruses on them. :ded: I used a second one right after that. :spin: And I used a few more (not for the same thing) before I got my first USB flash drive.]
I've used the 3½" ones, I've held 5¼" ones, and I haven't even seen 8" ones IRL.
I am old enough to have booted computers straight from 5¼" floppies (our family got its first computer in 1984, when internal fixed disks were not common on consumer-grade computers). I got rid of the last computer I owned that could read 3½" floppies in 2009, having copied the contents of all the floppies I had that could still be read (something like 2% to 5% were no longer readable) to a hard disk.
Frankly, I now regard removable media of any kind--floppy disks, USB keys, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, etc.--as a necessary evil, because of the data segmentation and media rot problems, neither of which goes away whether you are working with 1.44 MB or 23.2 GB per storage unit.
My mom was a teacher and she persisted in using her floppy disks up until she retired in 2009 or 2010. She claimed it was because she had all her lessons organized in various directories on them and so she didn't want to change what she did; for some reason, she refused to entertain the idea of simply copying them all to the hard drive (their first computer back in the 1980s had no hard drive, but that wasn't unusual then) and then treating the floppies as a backup. My mom is not what I would call a Luddite by any means. I guess she just didn't see any reason to change what worked. She DID finally agree that floppies were outdated when I pointed out that one photo taken with my DSLR would take up three or four of her floppies if saved as a JPEG.
I found a bunch of my old floppy disks in my parents' basement last time I was over there. I took them with me and stuck them in our storage unit. I'd have to boot one of my old PCs (also in our storage unit) to figure out what was on the 3.5-inchers. Not sure I have a way to read the 5.25-inchers.
Quote from: 1995hoo on June 01, 2014, 03:10:33 PMI found a bunch of my old floppy disks in my parents' basement last time I was over there. I took them with me and stuck them in our storage unit. I'd have to boot one of my old PCs (also in our storage unit) to figure out what was on the 3.5-inchers. Not sure I have a way to read the 5.25-inchers.
There are USB drives you can buy to handle floppy disks in both sizes. There is a more serious problem that has to do with obsolete operating systems. In my family we started with the Apple II, which used a ProDOS operating system with its own disk format, and did not switch to Windows and the FAT/NTFS series of disk formats until 1993. As a result, we have a fair number of old ProDOS floppies (in both sizes) with no clear idea of how to read them, although there is apparently now a free Apple Disk Transfer ProDOS (http://sourceforge.net/projects/adtpro/) program that can be used for this purpose. Another consideration is that the option to print to PDF did not become available until the late nineties, so the data on those disks (mostly old
AppleWorks files for my schoolwork in junior high and high school, but also some general-purpose utility files I had intended to keep up to date on an ongoing basis, such as a catalogue of my library, a list of books I had read, etc.) may not be accessible even with conversion filters. As matters now stand, anything I did in high school or as an undergraduate is now effectively lost unless I printed out a clean copy for permanent storage. I have a ten-ream box full of such copies which I think are going to have to be scanned to PDF sooner or later since, although I have the original files and access to software that can import them natively and print them to PDF, I really don't have the time to do all the setting and checking it would take to produce a clean PDF print for every single document.
What I remember most clearly from my campaign to copy over my floppies (from 2002 or thereabouts) is the sheer amount of time it took. I had my disks divided between software and data, and just the data side of things involved feeding 124 disks into a floppy drive, one after the other, over the course of a couple of afternoons. Software was another 52 disks. That is 176 disks for 178 MB, which at the time took up barely one-third of the space on a CD--very painful.
After I had been collecting construction plans for several years (I started in 2002 on a Windows 98 PC that had a 30-GB hard drive) and using CDs for permanent archiving, I decided that I should also keep the plans on an external USB hard drive. So in 2004 I purchased a 200-GB hard disk for this purpose. This was equivalent to 307 CDs, and feeding CDs into the CD drive one after another was painful. It was even more painful later when I accidentally started a format of the disk (thus rendering it unreadable and the data unrecoverable at reasonable cost) and had to copy hundreds of CDs' worth of data again. Things aren't really much better now--my current disk (3 TB) is equal to 129 of my current archiving medium (Blu-Ray disc).
Quote from: sammi on June 01, 2014, 12:01:12 AM
cat /dev/urandom | padsp tee /dev/audio > /dev/null
It gets really fun if you use files that have actual data in them...
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 01, 2014, 01:58:51 PM
What happened if you had 3 floppy drives (not sure why you would, but...)?
Were there ever motherboards that supported such a thing?
Quote
I kind of miss floppy disks. If only they had a capacity similar to modern flash drives...
Make a SD card that looks like a floppy and is the same (physical) size?
What is even stranger is they don't allow the question mark (?) because it is used for variables, but they do accept the inverted question mark (¿, used only in Spanish AFAIK) :ded:
That's because, to the computer, they are as distinct as, say, "#" and "Q".
Quote from: J N Winkler on June 01, 2014, 02:43:24 PM
I am old enough to have booted computers straight from 5¼" floppies
I've booted from paper tape and front panel switches.
Quote from: kkt on June 02, 2014, 06:32:49 PM
Quote from: J N Winkler on June 01, 2014, 02:43:24 PM
I am old enough to have booted computers straight from 5¼" floppies
I've booted from paper tape and front panel switches.
I worked in an office that had no good alternative to 8" floppies for some of its equipment... in 1999, 28 years into the format's life.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on June 01, 2014, 09:25:36 AM
When I name a file which includes the date, I'll keep it short and simple: today is 060114. Yesterday was 053114. Next week is 060814. Easy to see the month, day & year. A typical file name would be "Report 060114".
We could always go back to the era of 8 character file names, and file names without spaces.
You're doing it wrong. Now if you try to sort them, it will be a mess. Today is 20140605. Do it like that and it makes sense logically, and if you sort alphabetically, it will sort by date.