[p4] Re: lack of a rename command

[Steve Bennett]

Jeff A. Bowles wrote:
> At 04:39 PM 1/11/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>> You cannot use special characters (like '#') in filenames because Peforce
>> uses them internally.
> 
> Don't confuse things. This has absolutely nothing to do with how
> filenames
> are stored, rename operations, or anything of the sort.
> 
> It has to do with the syntax used to specify a revision. (Try
> using '@@' in
> a ClearCase filename and see how far you get with that!)  While it
> might be
> nice to be able to "escape" a special character, or remap it, it
> really is
> a completely separate issue.
> 
> -Jeff Bowles

Very good point.  I hadn't thought of the command line side effects of the
special characters as well.  Any attempt to resolve the other issues of
naming, renaming, and the like also needs to address entering names with
special characters on the command line, probably with an escape character.

The special characters issue hits close to home here -- when we converted
from Sourcesafe to Perforce, we were forced to manually rename about a
hundred files which used special characters in their filenames, not to
mention modifying the source code which made use of those files to look for
a different naming scheme.  And our Mac users sometimes bump heads on this
issue as well -- the Mac will allow nearly any character in their filenames
(*including* NUL characters!), so we have to always be paying attention to
the Perforce limits...

-->Steve Bennett