Valid characters on one o/s are invalid on another

["Kayne Ian (Softlab)" <Ian.Kayne () softlab co uk>]

Hey all,
        This recent thread about antivirus scanners & DOS archives got me
thinking. Years ago (before *zip introduced the non-absolute paths option),
it was possible to create a zip archive with some files in, hex edit the
archive and change the locations of some of these files, thus making it
extremely easy to transparently replace files on a system that the archive
is extracted on. This used to be a particularly nasty trick on amiga bbs's -
the amiga version of zip was pretty pathetic to say the least. Anyway, this
got me wondering about seeing whether this was still possible (albeit in a
different manner). After playing around, I noticed something strange.

        We all know Windows (well the FS really) doesn't allow certain ascii
characters to be used for filenames - ?, " etc... But, other o/s's
filesystems do - in this case Amiga O/S 3.0 & the FFS (fast file system).
So, when I got a CD on the amiga containing some files with legal characters
under workbench but illegal under windows, then tried to access the CD on a
windows machine (specifically the badly named files), some dodgy behaviour
happened. Files started "dissapearing" from the CD etc... Didn't go much
further than this...

        Just wondering if anyone else has any thoughts/opinions on this ...
Is it even any use or worth looking into? 

Ian Kayne
Technical Specialist - IT Solutions
Softlab Ltd - A BMW Company



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