What is the Technical Justification for Replacing a Comma (,) with a Carat-J (^J) in Filenames?

Hello I am Abdal and I would be glad to help you with your question. The technical justification for replacing a comma (",") with a carat-J ("^J") in filenames may vary depending on the specific software or system involved. However, in general, the replacement of characters in filenames is often done to ensure compatibility with different operating systems or file systems that have restrictions on certain characters. Here are a few reasons why a comma might be replaced with a carat-J or another character combination: 1 Some operating systems, such as Windows, have restrictions on certain characters that can be used in filenames. For example, Windows does not allow the use of characters like slashes ("/" or "\"), colons (":"), asterisks ("*"), question marks ("?"), quotation marks ('"'), and less than or greater than signs ("<", ">") in filenames. In such cases, software or systems may automatically replace these characters with a different character or character combination, such as a carat-J, to ensure compliance with the restrictions. 2. Different file systems also impose restrictions on the characters that can be used in filenames. For example, the NTFS file system used by Windows has restrictions on characters like slashes, colons, and question marks. While a comma is generally allowed in NTFS, specific software or systems may choose to replace it with another character to avoid any potential issues with compatibility or interoperability. 3. In some cases, filenames are used as part of a URL, and certain characters may have special meanings or need to be encoded. Comma is not a reserved character in URLs and does not require encoding, but different systems or software might have their own rules or conventions that lead to the replacement of commas for compatibility or consistency purposes. I hope this information helps. Regards, Abdal Give back to the community. Help the next person with this problem by indicating whether this answer solved your problem. Click Yes or No at the bottom.

Hello I am Abdal and I would be glad to help you with your question. The technical justification for replacing a comma (",") with a carat-J ("^J") in filenames may vary depending on the specific software or system involved. However, in general, the replacement of characters in filenames is often done to ensure compatibility with different operating systems or file systems that have restrictions on certain characters. Here are a few reasons why a comma might be replaced with a carat-J or another character combination: 1 Some operating systems, such as Windows, have restrictions on certain characters that can be used in filenames. For example, Windows does not allow the use of characters like slashes ("/" or "\"), colons (":"), asterisks ("*"), question marks ("?"), quotation marks ('"'), and less than or greater than signs ("<", ">") in filenames. In such cases, software or systems may automatically replace these characters with a different character or character combination, such as a carat-J, to ensure compliance with the restrictions. 2. Different file systems also impose restrictions on the characters that can be used in filenames. For example, the NTFS file system used by Windows has restrictions on characters like slashes, colons, and question marks. While a comma is generally allowed in NTFS, specific software or systems may choose to replace it with another character to avoid any potential issues with compatibility or interoperability. 3. In some cases, filenames are used as part of a URL, and certain characters may have special meanings or need to be encoded. Comma is not a reserved character in URLs and does not require encoding, but different systems or software might have their own rules or conventions that lead to the replacement of commas for compatibility or consistency purposes. I hope this information helps. Regards, Abdal Give back to the community. Help the next person with this problem by indicating whether this answer solved your problem. Click Yes or No at the bottom.

Hi, I have the same question. But is there a solution to prevent this from happening?

I use commas in my filenames and there were never any prompts saying commas are not allowed in file names. It still automatically replaces my commas with "^J" which is annoying as I have to keep changing them back. It doesn't make sense.

The question was specific to the use of ",". The other characters we understand. Please address why "," is being changed. Thank you.

This answer failed to address the question actually asked.

I have found that files in local storage are fine. It's the cloud files that get renamed.

That's correct. The original question is an attempt to determine what technical limitation (if any) prevents MS from storing documents which include a "comma" in the document name. You can do this in MS Word - why did they choose to make their Cloud storage incompatible with Word?