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Calvin Lopes replied on June 25, 2008 19:38 to the question "Why can't I link to a page with spaces in it's location?" in PBwiki:
There seems to be no reply to your question, so I will take a stab at it. You have not reposted your question, so perhaps you understand why there are certain computer conventions and restrictions that apply.
My experience in computers goes back to the "old days" when there was only DOS (disk operating system) and TOS (tape operating system), both big abvances over "plug-boards". Computers during that era maxed out at 64kb RAM and program addressing (the computer, not a single file).
See the following response elsewhere
http://getsatisfaction.com/pbwiki/top...
Computer programs were/are created by programmers who need to control the hardware via commands. The techniques created in the "old days" were learned by trial-and-error as much as acquired from a manual or in a classroom.
The "hardware" executes a command it receives by interpreting voltage fluctuations, i.e.changes in RAM memory (much of available RAM serves as Registers that interface with external hardware).
Programmers developed a convention of "compiling" these machine instructions from a higher-level language, e.g. Fortran, COBOL, Pascal, DOS, macros, C, C+, etcetera.
Spaces, commas, periods, slashes and the like are called delimiters, meaning STOP HERE. The technique to "interpreting" what action to perform is called PARSING.
So, when you put a SPACE in a filename, you are telling the program to STOP. There are various ways around this, the underscore is the most prevalent technique used because the filename seems to contain SPACES, when in actuality, IT DOES NOT. URLs (filenames) are often underlined to make them prominent. If you look closely, you will see those SPACES are actually UNDERSCORES (just copy the filename and paste it into a text document to see that).
PBwiki utilizes more than one way to depict URLs (filenames) so they can be executed. You will often see ASCII (hex) characters used, e.g. %20, %2B, etcetera. The "+" (plus sign) sometimes will appear, but it also has other reserved functions, meaning to concatenate, i.e. "Add That to This", and will work but is not the preferred method of naming files or for URLs..
If you want the 'semblance of SPACES, use the underscore. It's presence will likely be known only to the creator, or a techie, so you need to help educate the neophyte when distributing a filename or URL.-
Jeff started following the question "Why can't I link to a page with spaces in it's location?" in PBwiki.
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