Illegal character

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In computer science, an illegal character is a character that is not allowed by a certain programming language, protocol, or program. [1] To avoid illegal characters, some languages may use an escape character which is a backslash followed by another character. [2]

Contents

Examples

Windows

In the Windows operating system, illegal characters in file and folder names include colons, brackets, question marks, [3] and null characters. [4]

Illegal characters in Windows file names [4]
CharacterName
<less than
>greater than
:colon
"speech marks
/forward slash
\backslash
|pipe
?question mark
*asterisk

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References

  1. "illegal character | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  2. "Python Escape Characters". www.w3schools.com. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  3. "What Are Illegal Characters? (with pictures)". Easy Tech Junkie. 2023-08-12. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
  4. 1 2 alvinashcraft (2022-12-15). "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces - Win32 apps". learn.microsoft.com. Retrieved 2023-09-07.