Hello forum,

I am making patches which at the end are going to be used by normal people. Most normal people have forgotten, or never knew, that there once were problems with using spaces in file- and folder names.

For most occasions I get rid of this problem by using [to/fromsymbol]. Now, just by accident, I happen to have a folder with two consecutive spaces, and this breaks the [to/fromsymbol] fix. [coll] will not write to it.

Is there any way to make rock solid solution, allowing the use of all characters the system alows? I don't want the end users to have to worry about this. When something like this doesn't work, it's near impossible for them to know why.

All best,
Dag Henning

perhaps check out [list2symbol] or [list-l2s] ? i don't know what else to recommend.

not sure if pd has an equivalent of the %20 syntax that websites use?

How is it that you're getting paths as lists? Usually this happens because people save paths in message boxes. But if it's going to be used by different people, I wouldn't think you'd do that.

i have ran it to this it was killing me my pc user name folder has a space it when i made my user name: Zero Response, so i haded to change it which would throw other programs paths and files or make a folder outside of my user name folder works just fine

Thanks for the replies.

@mod:[list2symbol] does the same as [tosymbol] here, while [list-l2s] rids you of spaces altogether. Tried a bit with %20 with no success, but I have no idea how it should work if it ever will.

I think I found the problem, anyway: message boxes always truncates consecutive spaces to one when it sends the message.

Still: any way to solve this problem? I.e., the challenge is: any way to save, say, a coll file to a folder with two or more consecutive spaces, without going through a save dialog?

i got it working, from a message box.

like this:

[/path/my folder name with spaces in it/filename.coll (
|
[list2symbol]
|
[write $1 (
|
[coll]

how this works, is that first your message is somehow bundled as a single symbol with the [list2symbol] object. I don't know what pd does 'under the hood' here to include the spaces as part of a single symbol, but it's probably the same thing that happens when you use [savepanel] or [openpanel]

then, you need to add a separate [write ( command, that is not part of the symbol, with [write $1 (

i just checked this, and it definitely works (here on this computer at least)

@mod again: yes, this is the same way my patch is working (other than me using [prepend write] instead of [write $1( ). The problem is when you have two or more *consecutive* spaces, like this: [/path/my folder name with more spaces in it/filename.coll (

Does this work for you?

More observations from my "stupid user" research:

• The only illegal character in OSX, the colon, is impossible to use in file- and folder names, whether you try from the Finder, or from a pd save dialog. Conclusion: no problem here. I suppose it's the same situation in Windows and Linux?

• For folder and file names with slashes in them fetched from the file system, a slash gets converted to a colon while in pd, and converted back to slash going out of pd. This, of course, works just fine only because the colon is illegal in OSX files and folders. Conclusion: no problem.

• If, however, you choose to save a file through the pd save dialog with a slash in its name, you're in trouble. Nothing gets saved. Conclusion: problem. (My end users will not be able to see the pd window warnings.)

Note that my stupid user is never editing or writing anything in the patch. He is only opening a folder, and later my patch will write a coll file to that folder. So the last example is not relevant for my specific use.

This is kind of what I was asking before: why are you storing filenames in message boxes as lists in the first place? The workaround likely involves not doing that, and I really have never come across a reason to do it in patches that would be shared.

Well, I'm not saving the paths in the message boxes, but storing them temporarily. As I said, the user choses a folder, and on later occasions a file must be written to this folder.

Where would you temporarily store paths?

If you just store them in [symbol], (without converting them to a list) I don't think you should have a problem.

Yes, that seems logical. But how do I add a filename to the folder path without leaving the symbol domain? I tried [sprintf %s/%s], but that needs another [tosymbol], and multiple consecutive spaces in folder names are lost.

Sorry for being a symbolic idiot.

It depends. Perhaps you could post a patch showing how you are getting the path and filename, and then we could figure out how to make it work.

here's how i got it working:

[bang (
|
[openpanel]
|
[splitfilename]
|
[symbol]
|

|
| [loadbang]
| |
| [symbol (
| /
[list2symbol]
|
[write $1 (
|
[coll]

just bang the left inlet of the [symbol] to save the file. I tested this and it works.