filename

Article summary

command shell showing filenames in a directory A filename is used to uniquely identify a computer file in a file system. Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths. A filename may (depending on the file system) include: * name – base name of the file * extension – may indicate the format of the file (e.g. .txt for plain text, .pdf for Portable Document Format, .dat for unspecified binary data, etc.) The components required to identify a file by utilities and applications varies across operating systems, as does the syntax and format for a valid filename. The characters allowed in filenames depend on the file system. The letters A–Z and digits 0–9 are allowed by most file systems; many file systems support additional characters, such as the letters a–z, special characters, and other printable characters such as accented letters, symbols in non-Roman alphabets, and symbols in non-alphabetic scripts. Some file systems allow even unprintable characters, including Bell, Null, Return and Linefeed, to be part of a filename, although most utilities do not handle them well.…

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