Characters to Avoid in Directories and Filenames
http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/web/resources/cms/characters-to-avoid.html
Do not use any of these common illegal characters:
| # pound | < left angle bracket | $ dollar sign | + plus sign |
| % percent | > right angle bracket | ! exclamation point | ` backtick |
| & ampersand | * asterisk | ‘ single quotes | | pipe |
| { left bracket | ? question mark | “ double quotes | = equal sign |
| } right bracket | / forward slash | : colon | |
| \ back slash | blank spaces | @ at sign |
Also, keep these rules in mind.
- Don’t start or end your filename with a space, period, hyphen, or underline.
- Keep your filenames under 31 characters.
- Most operating systems are case sensitive.
- Non-ASCII characters need to be escaped.
Example:
| Bad filenames | Translates to |
| F&A Costs.html | F&A%20Costs.html |
| my PDF file#name.pdf | my%20PDF%20file%23name.pdf |
Good filenames:
- F_A_Costs/index.html or F-A-Costs/index.html
- my_PDF_file_name.pdf or my-PDF-file-name.pdf