Saving (unusual) linux filenames

[Albert Hopkins]

On Tue, 2010-08-31 at 16:49 +0200, AmFreak at web.de wrote:
> i have a script that reads and writes linux paths in a file. I save
> the  
> path (as unicode) with 2 other variables. I save them seperated by ","
> and  
> the "packets" by newlines. So my file looks like this:
> path1, var1A, var1B
> path2, var2A, var2B
> path3, var3A, var3B
> ....
> 
> this works for "normal" paths but as soon as i have a path that does  
> include a "," it breaks. The problem now is that (afaik) linux
> allows  
> every char (aside from "/" and null) to be used in filenames. The
> only  
> solution i can think of is using null as a seperator, but there have
> to a  
> cleaner version ? 

Why is your impression that the null character is "dirty"?

E.g. that's how find|xargs etc. usually work.

Another alternative would be if you gaurantee that your varn's don't
have commas then put the path last.  But that doesn't account for
filenames containing newlines.

Another alternative would be to wrap with some kind of serialization
library. But really, what's so dirty about null?