ftpaccess path-filter question on allowed characters

[Jeff Carlin]

The example to use for the path-filter section in the ftpaccess is "^[-A-Za-z0-9_\.]*$ ^\. ^-" which restricts spaces and several other special characters. We have a lot of windows clients that attempt to send files with commas or spaces in the file name. I have changed the path-filter to allow this, but I am concerned that the default was restrictive for a reason. Does anyone know why spaces and commas, as well as other special characters, were excluded? Are there security concerns? Was it just to keep wierd file names from being uploaded into the directory?

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

From the perspective of UNIX, the only character that can't be in a filename is "/". Whitespace is perfectly legal but is generally avoided. If you like, you can even embed control characters. Most shell scripts do most quote pathnames so that those with whitespace are parsed incorrectly.

If you allow very loose filename construction be prepared for some jumping through hoops in your cleanup scripts.

Personally, I think allowing whitespace in filenames is state-of-the-art stupid but nobody asked me.

[Jeff Carlin]

I agree with you. So, you don't see any potential security problems. I can deal with the annoyance of wacko filenames.