Date   : Sat, 13 Sep 1986 13:13:00 MDT
From   : WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA
Subject: Special characters in TOPS-20 filenames

All the files in our collections which were uploaded as-is from
existing collections, such as CPMUG, SIG/M, and PC/BLUE, have
some filenames containing "special characters" as far as our TOPS-20
file system is concerned.  These characters are not considered
"special" by their respective operating systems, but they must be
quoted by prefixing a ^V immediately prior to each such character.

I have scanned our collections, and the following special characters
currently exist in the filenames:

& - ampersand          @ - at sign
/ - slash              + - plus sign
# - pound sign         ^ - caret
% - percent sign       ' - single quote
! - exclamation mark

In general, all punctuation characters are considered special.  When
in doubt, it doesn't hurt to prefix the character with a ^V, except
for the period between the filename and filetype.

Those of you accessing our collections via FTP have already discovered
this ^V prefix requirement.  However, those of you accessing our
system through ARCHIVE-REQUEST may be wondering why you are getting
back "File Not Found" messages.  This ^V prefix requirement is part of
the reason.  The other part is that there is a bug in the runtime
library for the version of the C compiler I am using for the server
and some of the utilities it uses.  The next release should have this
fixed and hopefully I will have figured out how to have the server
automatically insert the ^V prefix where required so that you need not
have to bother remembering to do so.

Where that leaves us at the moment is that files with those special
characters, especially the slash, imbedded in filenames are currently
inaccessible via ARCHIVE-REQUEST.

--Frank