29890 - Munging .msf file names should result in unique names

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect, P3)

Description

[Karen Huang]

Used 03-01-08/09-M15 commercial builds:

This bug is related to bug#17681 & bug#20324.
Right now, we have \ " \\ [] : ; = , | < characters been munged and they all 
been solved to replace these illegal characters with '_' 
( > & / still having problem -- there was bug#29581 & bug#22474, may need to 
open separate bug for tracking "/"...)

The problem here is:
If I have folders called "b\c" & "b<c", seamonkey will treat them all "b_c",
So if I am trying to copy the messages to folder "b\c", folder "b<c" will got 
the same message as folder "b\c" since we do not have unique name for those 
munged .msf files.

Comment 1

[Karen Huang]

Change QA Contact to me.

Comment 2

[Phil Peterson]

cc bienvenu and jefft. Can one of you take this?

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

I can take it, but I won't get to it until Monday since I'm on vacation thursday 
and friday.

Comment 4

[Karen Huang]

Problem not occurred on Linux, adding pp on the keywords
Will try on Mac later....

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

accepting, m16

Comment 6

[Karen Huang]

Problem not occurred on Mac by using 03-07-08-M15 commercial build.
So this is specific for WinNT problem.

Comment 7

[Karen Huang]

May need to check on Win98, too.

Comment 8

[selmer (gone)]

Not beta2 stopper, marking M17.

Comment 9

[John G. Myers]

If this is put off for too long, it could become a transition problem, with 
additional code having to be written for users with folders and .msf files using 
the old munging algorithm.

Comment 10

[lchiang]

I've forwarded your comments, John, to selmer.

Comment 11

[selmer (gone)]

Hmm.  This bug gives the appearance of being about multiple topics.  One
possible topic is that some characters are still not being munged.  However, we
have a couple other bugs for that.  What I _think_ this bug is about is that we
don't force our munging to result in unique names.  Is that what this bug is
actually about?

If it is, then I assume you're saying this will create a new migration problem
in the future?

Comment 12

[John G. Myers]

Yes, this is about not forcing munging to result in unique names.  That is 
likely to cause a new migration problem in the future.

Comment 13

[selmer (gone)]

Changing summary to reflect what needs to be fixed.

I assume if we did something like use "_" as an escape character and then assign
each of the illegal characters a fixed code we could easily solve this problem.
As an example, ";" could be mapped to "_a_" and "[" to "_b_" and so on (choosing
mappings in some logical way if possible.)  Perhaps the trailing "_" is not
necessary?  You could also fold redundant escapes into a single escape so ";["
becomes "_ab_" using the above example mapping.

Is this proposal a correct solution?  Is there a better one?  I hope
implementing this solution would be almost trivial.

Comment 14

[John G. Myers]

Either you need a trailing "_" for a "shift out" or you need an escape character  
prefix for each fixed character.  In either case, you need to escape the escape 
character itself.

On NT you need to also escape "." and "~"

"." is a problem because trailing .'s are ignored.  "a." and "a" are the same 
file.  You could get away with only escaping it if it is at the end of a file.

"~" is a problem because it is used in creating 8.3 aliases for long file names.

Comment 15

[John G. Myers]

I would recommend an escape before each mapped character, with no trailing 
escape.  The server is more likely to encounter single problem characters than 
runs of three or more adjacent problem characters.

Comment 16

[scottputterman]

moving to M18 and nominating for beta3.

Comment 17

[David :Bienvenu]

OK, fixed.

Comment 18

[Karen Huang]

May I know this fix in Trunk, Branch or both builds? 

Comment 19

[lchiang]

Since this bug isn't marked nsbeta2, it means that it doesn't matter if the fix 
is in branch nsbeta2 builds or not.  Just verify on the trunk M18 builds.  
Thanks Karen!

Comment 20

[Karen Huang]

It seems that copying the messages to folder "c<d" - no problem and there is no 
same message displaying in folder "c\d", but there is problem for copying 
messages to "c\d" folder, for some reason, it just doesn't display the message 
at all when I copying the messages to "c\d".....

I check that there are unique names for the .msf files for c<d (c_d.msf) & c\d 
(c_d-1.msf), but I couldn't understand why the copied messages didn't display in 
the c\d folder? Need more Investigation.....

Comment 21

[Karen Huang]

This bug has been resolved a while ago.
Verified 01-02-09-trunk build, we do have unique name for those munged .msf 
files. Verified when copying different messages to folder "c<d" & "c\d" are 
displaying msgs differently. Marking as verified.