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Having worked with several desktop application over many years, I recently came across a new issue that was tricky to resolve.  My project eMusic Download Manager uses the artist and album name to create directories.  After many tests and retests I found that the legacy naming for custom ports and peripherals that Microsoft used to or still supports can't be used as directory names.

Basically the album name "Aux" is a reserved word for windows folders in the following album.  Luckily I found a posting that highlighted more key reserved words that can't be used and promptly updated the application.  The problem is the errors I received where trapped by download error messages leading me to believe that it was the act of downloading that was failing, lesson learned.

Here's a list of reserved words that shouldn't or can't be used for folder or file names:

• CON
• PRN
• AUX
• CLOCK$ (NT and older)
• NUL
• COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9
• LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9

Here's my response to our Customer Service folks:

"I'm including the links just so that you can point and laugh at me.

http://www.blindedbytech.com/2006/11/16/forbidden-file-and-folder-names-on-windows/"

Just hope this helps anyone bit by this bug.

« Last Edit: September 11, 2009, 08:15:33 PM by mrtech »

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April 27, 2009, 12:22:07 PM