Issues with synchronizing folders with leading spaces in folder name

Discuss new features and functions
Posts: 68
Joined: 13 Aug 2018

TheExpert

Hello all,

the actual build, 10.25, of FreeFileSync seems to have issues with synchronizing folders with leading spaces in the folder name. It's bad that there are users who are creating folders with leading spaces in the folder name but in the past with older releases of FreeFileSync I didn't get error messages like this:
Folder name "xxx" starts/ends with space character.
Is this a new error handling of FreeFileSync 10.25?

Kind Regards

TheExpert
Posts: 14
Joined: 21 Jun 2018

bobjtx1

Zenju, I have this same issue. I am on a Mac and to get folders to list at the top of a directory on OSX (like is done in Windows), I start all folder names with a space so they sort to the top. Version 10.25 now complains that my directory name "starts or ends with a space", and throws an error. This was not an issue for previous versions. This needs to be fixed, as filesystems allow naming directories or files with these characters, and if the filesync software throws an error on allowed naming conventions, there will be errors all over the place and the software will no longer be useful.

Note: I suspect others may also be using any character less than "A" (x0045) at the beginning a a directory name to force sorting directories to the top on non MS-Windows file systems. Other characters can also work (Hyphen, "!", "=", "0", etc.), but are not as visually pleasing as a simple space character.

At this point I have to roll back to the previous version, as almost all my directories start with a space character, as this version will no longer copy the files.

Thanks.
User avatar
Site Admin
Posts: 7212
Joined: 9 Dec 2007

Zenju

Okay, next FFS version will allow creating such folders again.
Posts: 1
Joined: 27 Dec 2021

g.guerin

Hello
I have this issue on Linux (ubuntu 20.04, ext4 fs) using version 11.15 (installed from the binary downloaded on your website). All folder and file name starting or ending with space return an error.
User avatar
Site Admin
Posts: 7212
Joined: 9 Dec 2007

Zenju

Hello
I have this issue on Linux (ubuntu 20.04, ext4 fs) using version 11.15 (installed from the binary downloaded on your website). All folder and file name starting or ending with space return an error. g.guerin, 27 Dec 2021, 09:01
What error messages do you see? Creating folders with leading/trailing spaces are allowed as far as FFS is concerned.