Handling __MACOSX

Discuss new features and functions
Posts: 1
Joined: 7 Nov 2018

Asanam

When syncing folders from a Windows SMB fileshare to and Ext NTFS USB drive files and folders originating from Mac users prevents FreeFileSync from syncing resulting in Error.... Invalid trailing character " ".

Any way around this?

Thanks
Posts: 1
Joined: 9 Jun 2020

karlchen500

I have the same problem...suddenly...(came up early 2020), means: in earlier versions of FFS there was not the problem of the above mentioned error message "Invalid trailing character " for many, many files.

But since "some" revisions, FFS is not able to create / sync folders or files if there is a " " (space) at the end of the folder name or a second or mire dots in the file name. Example: Allmyfiles.need copy.doc

I'm using FFS version 10.24 - 64bit, running Mac OS Catalina 10.15.5
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Posts: 7040
Joined: 9 Dec 2007

Zenju

FFS deliberately doesn't allow creating folder names starting/ending with a space because this is usually an error.
Posts: 8
Joined: 14 Feb 2020

Moisie

(Haha - just came up against this too!)
How do you mean this is usually an error? On an OS where these are valid naming schemes, isn't the current behaviour just producing an error?
Posts: 2
Joined: 5 Oct 2021

sanddweller

This has been an issue for me too
Syncing between two cloud based file stores (AWS Workdocs, and Google Drive).
Mac users have create directories and files with leading and trailing spaces, and this is rejected by GoogleDrive.
Ive been abel to mount the AWS Workdocs on windows, and thus on WSL and find/rename there but, this is rather a pain.

A general setting to truncate leading|trailing spaces (or other non-allowed) characters woudl be ideal.
or - a regex to apply to source filename to match/create destination.
eg 's/\/[::space::]*(.*)[::space::]*[/|$]/\1/g'
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Posts: 2248
Joined: 22 Aug 2012

Plerry

Deletion or substitution of leading or trailing spaces by whatever character may cause duplication of file- or folder-names.
So whatever FFS would do here is doomed to cause problems some times, and then FFS would be blamed.

You chose to use non cross-platform-compatible file names, and you are the only one that knows how to safely rename files in your use-case. So, you can better solve the problem yourself upfront (before running a sync), instead of expecting FFS to solve a <shields_up> problem you created yourself <shields_down> ...
Last edited by Plerry on 06 Dec 2021, 08:48, edited 1 time in total.
Posts: 2
Joined: 5 Oct 2021

sanddweller

You chose to use non platform-compatible file names, and you are the only one that knows how to safely rename files in your use-case. So, you can better solve the problem yourself upfront (before running a sync), instead of expecting FFS to solve a <shields_up> problem you created yourself <shields_down> ... Plerry, 05 Oct 2021, 11:09
Of course, you are correct. IN most cases, if such filter capability was provided, the FFS user would be aware of the filters put for specific purposes, and well, caveat emptor.
Of course, default, with no filter set, then FFS would not cause such conflict.

#Just a suggestion to make it more useful.

Great utility.. thanks! 👏