[GRASS-dev] Re: mapsets and locations with spaces on wingrass?

[andrea antonello]

Hi Glynn,
thanks for your indeep clarification. It is indeed interesting.

So if I got it right, the fact that locations and mapsets with spaces
work in GRASS on linux and unix is more a present of the operating
system, than anything else? The fact that paths in windows are a bit
stranger (%20 for spaces in urls, the leading \ and such...) makes
this all messy?

Regards,
Andrea


>> >>> So, in the path to the GRASS database including that is might be ok,
>> >>> but apparently not yet in a location name.
>> >>
>> >> Pretty sure that is the point. Having a space both in the mapset and
>> >> in the location leads to failure for me.
>> >> GRASS doesn't even open (both console and gui mode) in that case.
>> >>
>> >
>> > The main problems rely on spaces in the GRASS path; I still did not detected
>> > problems related to spaces in the GIS Data Base path when launching
>> > executable modules; I suppose there may be some problems only when launching
>> > scripts.
>>
>> Sorry, I'm not sure I get you.
>> I am sure that there are problems if the location name has spaces or
>> the mapset name has spaces.
>> You agree with that?
>
> Aha. I had assumed that you were talking about spaces in the database
> path (GISDBASE), which should work but occasionally doesn't.
>
> While the database path can (in theory) be any legal pathname, spaces
> (and various other characters) are not permitted "beyond that point":
> not in the names of locations, mapsets, or maps (or similar entities,
> e.g. imagery groups, named regions, etc).
>
> That isn't specific to Windows.
>
> For most of GRASS, names cannot contain any of the following
> characters:
>
>        / " ' @ , = *
>
> (slash, double quote, single quote, at, comma, equals, asterisk), nor
> can they contain spaces, control characters (codes below 32), the
> delete character (code 127) or 8-bit characters (codes 128 and above).
>
> The following:
>
>        \ : ? < > |
>
> (backslash, colon, question mark, less-than, greater-than, vertical
> bar) aren't specifically prohibited by GRASS, but won't work on
> Windows as they aren't allowed in filenames.
>
> For vector maps, the rules are even more restrictive: a vector map
> name must be a valid SQL identifier, which means that it must begin
> with a letter, can only contain letters, digits and underscores,
> cannot be an SQL keyword, and cannot exceed any maximum length imposed
> by the database backend which is used.
>
> --
> Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
>