Colon in Virtual Server Path

[TCr82]

Hello Forum,

I want to ask, what is the reason for excluding colon from possible characters for a virtual path?



The Error Message: Character '\' is not allowed in the path. Moreover, file and directory names in the path must not include the ':' character and must not terminate with a space or a dot.

I am asking, because our old server software (I try to replace now) supported it before. And the bad thing is, that the changes to the client side are hard to do.

Virtual path format

The format of the virtual path is the same one used by UNIX-like operating systems: files and directories are separated by the slash ‘/’ character and all files and directories belong to a unique root, whose name is exactly ‘/’. Virtual paths are normalized by resolving all . and ..
directories and removing any trailing ‘/’ character.

From: https://filezillapro.com/docs/server/ad ... oup-panel/

And on the docs - the colon is not forbidden/explained.

This is the old path, what was previously a mounted network drive.


In my opinion, the limitations for colons on a windows client, is only a ftp client "problem" which should be handled (translated) on that place - not a limitation for the ftp server. Or is there any RFC which forbids colons in paths?

Or I am doing something wrong? Or is there a "hack" to overcome the limitation by using any escape characters or stuff like : or something?

[botg]

You are still running FileZilla Server on Windows, so the Windows-specific limitations of its filesystem all apply. If you want to use backslashes and colons in paths, you need to run FileZilla Server on a non-Windows operating system.

[TCr82]

For me the limitation is not on the FTP path - it is on the local/remote (Local or UNC) paths.

The FTP path is created on the server process and don't need to map 1 to 1 to a real local directory!

The old FTP Server also supports that path and is also running on windows.

Even FileZilla had support for it some versions before:

https://superuser.com/questions/1103578 ... lla-server

[boco]

Virtual paths (that's what the user sees in the client) follow the TVFS declaration. UNIX-like, forward slashes, no drive letters supported (although the colon is an allowed path character under non-Windows OS).
You simply cannot use V: as virtual path under Windows, using /V would be OK. Has nothing to do with physical paths, which are never exposed to the client.