How would I go about creating a filename with invalid characters such as :?> ?

Question

I need to do create a file with a filename such as :>?, is this possible somehow? Windows stops it.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, you cannot use the reserved characters when creating folders or files due to them being part of system functions.

What I recommend you do is look through the Character Map application - You can go to run and type charmap.

from here, you may be able to find alternate symbols that look the same, for example:

(copy and paste these, you will see that they are different)

Instead of forward slash / - you can use a division symbol ∕

Instead of Colon : - you can use the modifier letter colon ꞉

and so on!

Answer 2

You can boot from a Linux disk (such as Knoppix), and mount the NTFS partition.

Linux has much less restrictions on files names, and will let you create such names (I have tried it).

Answer 3

Some operating systems prohibit some particular characters from appearing in file names: (Resource from Wikipedia)

/ slash used as a path name component separator in Unix-like, Windows, and Amiga systems. (The MS-DOS command.com shell would consume it as a switch character, but Windows itself always accepts it as a separator[2][vague])

\ backslash Also used as a path name component separator in MS-DOS, OS/2 and Windows (there is no difference between slash and backslash); allowed in Unix filename

? question mark used as a wildcard in Unix, Windows and AmigaOS; marks a single character. Allowed in Unix filenames

* asterisk used as a wildcard in Unix, MS-DOS, RT-11, VMS and Windows. Marks any sequence of characters (Unix, Windows, later versions of MS-DOS) or any sequence of characters in either the basename or extension (thus "." in early versions of MS-DOS means "all files". Allowed in Unix filenames,

: colon used to determine the mount point / drive on Windows; used to determine the virtual device or physical device such as a drive on AmigaOS, RT-11 and VMS; used as a pathname separator in classic Mac OS. Doubled after a name on VMS, indicates the DECnet nodename (equivalent to a NetBIOS (Windows networking) hostname preceded by "\".)

| vertical bar designates software pipelining in Unix and Windows; allowed in Unix filenames

" quotation mark used to mark beginning and end of filenames containing spaces in Windows

< less than used to redirect input, allowed in Unix filenames

> greater than used to redirect output, allowed in Unix filenames

. period allowed but the last occurrence will be interpreted to be the extension separator in VMS, MS-DOS and Windows. In other OSes, usually considered as part of the filename, and more than one full stop may be allowed.

Answer 4

The only way is to manually edit the hard drive using a program like HxD. If you do this though, most likely the files won't be accessible by any program. For example, if you tried to open a file named abc\def.txt, you'd get a message that the directory abc doesn't exist.

Answer 5

You can install the Subsystem for Unix Applications if you're on Ultimate or Enterprise. From there you can create such names.

Answer 6

Like William Hilsum's post suggested, you can use similar looking characters. The article How to work around Windows' restricted characters on MythOfEchelon.co.uk includes full-width alternatives and others. (The table below includes suggestions from the comments on that article.):

Symbol	Name	Unicode code
⧵	Reverse Solidus Operator	U+29F5
∕	Division Slash	U+2215
꞉	Modifier Letter Colon	U+A789
⁎	Low Asterisk	U+204E
⃰	Thin space followed by combining asterisk above	U+2009, U+20F0
？	Fullwidth Question Mark	U+FF1F
“	Left Double Quotation Mark	U+201C
”	Right Double Quotation Mark	U+201D
˂	Modifier Letter Left Arrowhead	U+02C2
˃	Modifier Letter Right Arrowhead	U+02C3
＜	Fullwidth Less-Than Sign	U+FF1C
＞	Fullwidth Greater-Than Sign	U+FF1E
⏐	Vertical Line Extension	U+23D0

Answer 7

You can do this in git bash.

mkdir "*"

asterisks show as • though :/