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Q&A How can I restrict filename characters?

A file can be created by the human user directly interacting on the laptop, or indirectly by a program. In principle, you cannot detect statically all file creation calls in a software (even if yo...

posted 7mo ago by Basile Starynkevitch‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Basile Starynkevitch‭ · 2023-10-27T10:44:10Z (7 months ago)
A file can be created by the human user directly interacting on the laptop, or indirectly by a program.

In principle, you cannot detect statically all file creation calls in a software (even if you have access to its source code), because of [Rice's theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice%27s_theorem).

In practice, you could (with a lot of efforts) customize your user interface (e.g. graphical desktop, like [GNOME](https://www.gnome.org/)) to limit in most (but not all) cases what the user is permitted to create interactively.

You could even (in theory) design your own operating system which has no files at all (but persistent objects). See the old [Tunes](http://tunes.org/) project.