450327 - Local (file:///) files cannot be opened if the filename contains "#".

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Ross G]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

I believe the root cause of this issue is with Firefox and not the LocalLink add-on that I'm using to be able to open local (file:///) files. If I attempt to use LocalLink (via right-click context menu) to open any file with the "#" character in the filename, Firefox says the file cannot be found. 

Example: file:///E:/Temp/Test File#2.txt

This happens regardless of whether I type the above into the address bar or click a link on a Web page. I have tried putting quotes around the whole string and URL encoding/escaping the "#" character but I still get file not found. 

My suspicious is that the root cause is in the way "#" is normally interpreted as an anchor target for most links. However for the file:/// "protocol" it should be interpreted as a part of the whole filename. I haven't tested but if my suspicious are correct for the above example, a file at E:\Temp\Test File should be opened because everything after and including the "#" seems to get truncated when finding the file on the filesystem.

I haven't tested whether this will happen with any other special characters but it seems this is probably a special case.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have LocalLink add-on installed or configure Firefox such that opening local links is allowed.
2. Create file on your local drive (LocalLink doesn't seem to let you open files on a mapped network drive) such as C:\Test #1.txt.
3. Create a simple HTML page with a link or type in the address bar: file:///C:/Test #1.txt.
Actual Results:  
Firefox will display a File Not Found page with the correct filename used. For the example in Reproduction Step 2 it would display: Firefox can't find the file at /C:/Test #1.txt. 

Expected Results:  
The file would be found in the filesystem and the appropriate file handler would be called to open the file, OR if no file handler was found a dialog box would prompt the user for what to do.

The following add-ons are installed and enabled:
Adblock 0.5.3.043
Flashblock 1.5.6
FlashGot 1.0.4.5
LocalLink 0.4
Stealther 1.0.6
Toolbar Buttons 0.5.0.5

The following add-ons are installed but disabled:
mediaplayerconnectivity 0.9.1

Just to prove to myself this is not related to any other add-ons I disabled all of them except LocalLink (which is required to attempt this) and the error still persists.

Comment 1

[Ross G]

My suspicions were correct. Let's say two files exist on the local filesystem in the same folder; one called "Test" (note this file has no file extension) and "Test #1.txt" in the root of the C: drive. A link pointing to file:///C:/Test #1.txt will indeed open "Test", and not "Test #1.txt" which is not the correct behavior.

I suppose this could be somewhat of a security issue in that the expected file is not the one actually opened. Of course, opening local files from a Web page in Firefox is a security issue to begin with, so the severity of this bug on top of that remains to be judged.

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Works fine for me on Mac.  I just have to make sure the "#" in the filename is escaped as "%23".

Comment 3

[Ross G]

You're right Jesse, I was escaping it using the HTML encoding, # (if that even displays correctly) not URL encode of %23. Thanks, I'm going to change this to resolved.