Legal Visual SourceSafe Naming Conventions

• Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for Windows, versions 4.0, 5.0
• Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for Windows NT, versions 4.0, 5.0
• Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for Windows 95, versions 4.0, 5.0

SUMMARY

Visual SourceSafe does not allow certain characters in project names and filenames. Some of these limitations are specific to certain operating systems and some are over all platforms. Attempting to use these characters may cause the computer to hang (stop responding), quit, or corrupt some files. Please use caution when dealing with non-standard names.

MORE INFORMATION

Legal Filename Syntax

NTFS:

   1 to 255 character name
   Complete path for a file or project name cannot exceed 259 characters,
   including the separators
   May not begin or end with a space
   May not begin with a $
   May contain 1 or more file extensions (eg. MyFile.Ext1.Ext2.Ext3.Txt)
   Legal characters in the range of 32 - 255 but not ?"/\<>*|:
   Filenames may be mixed case
   Filename comparisons are case insensitive (eg. ThIs.TXT = this.txt)

   1 to 11 characters in the 8.3 naming convention
   Legal characters are A-Z, 0-9, Double Byte Character Set (DBCS)
      characters (128 - 255), and _^$~!#%&-{}@'()
   May not contain spaces, 0 - 31, and "/\[]:;|=,
   Must not begin with $
   Uppercase only filenames, lowercase letters are mapped to uppercase

Legal Project Name Syntax

   Project name must be 1 to 259 characters in length
   Illegal characters are "\<>|:; and tab
   May not begin or end with spaces
   May not begin with a $
   May contain DBCS characters

Legal Label Syntax

   Label must be 1 to 31 characters in length
   Must not begin or end with spaces or tabs
   May contain DBCS characters

Legal Username Syntax

   Username must be 1 to 31 characters
   Must not begin or end with a space
   May not contain !"$%'()/:;<>?@[]\{}=^|*, or tab
   May contain DBCS characters

REFERENCES

Query using "Conventions for Filenames" in Visual SourceSafe Books Online.