Will Windows Take That Name?

About this interactive

Because of the way paths are written, a file name cannot reuse the characters that build a path. The lesson's example is the backslash: in a name, Windows could not tell whether it meant a separate directory or part of the name. When you try to type one, Windows refuses and lists every character it will not take: \ / : * ? " < > | That is the backslash and forward slash, the colon (it follows a drive letter, as in C:), the asterisk and question mark (wildcards), the double quote, the less-than and greater-than signs, and the vertical bar. Everything else on the keyboard is fair game: spaces, hyphens, underscores, apostrophes, parentheses, square brackets, ampersands, percent signs, hash signs, plus signs, and extra periods, as in report.final.v2.docx. One name at a time: will Windows accept it? A wrong answer resets your streak and shows the right bin. Five correct in a row finishes the round.

What you'll learn

Tell whether Windows will accept a file name, by spotting the characters a file name cannot contain because the file system uses them for paths and commands: \ / : * ? " < > |

Aligned to

CompTIA Tech+

3.2 Compare and contrast components of an operating system.

Key terms

Path: The full address of a file or directory location within a file system hierarchy, expressed as a sequence of directory names separated by slashes or backslashes.
Directory: A named container in a file system that organizes files and subdirectories into a hierarchical structure, navigated via the command line.
File System: The method and data structures an operating system uses to organize, store, name, and retrieve files on a storage device; common examples include NTFS on Windows, APFS on macOS, and ext4 on Linux.

Topics

File Management Path Windows File Naming Interactive Streak Sort

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