How was the list of restricted characters for ensurePath decided?

[chopeen]

Type of discussion.

I just want to chat

Tell us more.

The original list of restricted characters was very broad, then some characters were un-restricted, but the current regex:

const restricted = /[#%&<>*?\b\n\r\0!'"|‘“^`]/;

still prohibits some characters that are valid in paths in any major OS. I personally struggle with single quotes ', ampersands & and hashes # as they appear in quite a few repositories handled by our Renovate instance.

The code quotes http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digital/writing/characters-avoid/, but this article talk about "web folders as well as for downloadable files", not source code.

What's the reason why ensurePath was added in #21433?
What was the problem that needed to be solved?

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Related PR: #21433, followed by:

• fix(fs): allow @ inside paths #21476
• fix(fs): allow +$ inside paths #21482
• fix(fs): allow {} inside paths #21530
• fix(fs): permit square brackets [] in file paths #21625

[viceice]

I'll remove the regex check and let the os handle invalid chars tomorrow.

it was added for more safety

[viceice]

• fix(fs): remove regex path validation #21871