Unicode¶

One of programmer’s worst nightmare.

Substitution for Path¶

Let’s use unicode for illegal character.

Windows 7¶

Add new String value named EnableHexNumpad with value 1 to HKEY_Current_User/Control Panel/Input Method in Windows 7.

After restart you can do the following step:

Press and hold down the Alt key.
Press the + (plus) key on the numeric keypad.
Type the hexadecimal unicode value.
Release the Alt key.

Important

Due to Alt key is shortcut to menu, some application cannot directly enter the unicode character. So you must enter the unicode character in other application such as Windows Explorer by creating new folder for example.

Character List¶

Name	Symbol	Unicode
Fullwidth Reverse Solidus	＼	U+FF3C
Fullwidth Solidus	／	U+FF0F
Fullwidth Colon	：	U+FF1A
Fullwidth Asterisk	＊	U+FF0A
Heavy Asterisk	✱	U+2731
Fullwidth Question Mark	？	U+FF1F
Fullwidth Quotation Mark	＂	U+FF02
Fullwidth Less-Than Sign	＜	U+FF1C
Fullwidth Greater-Than Sign	＞	U+FF1E
Pipe	ǀ	U+01C0

Automatic Clipboard Replacement¶

Manually adding the character is a real pain in the ass after some time especially when renaming a file or folder. In the past I use Clipbor, but because it’s discontinue in SyMenu, now I use ArsClip and trust me, it’s much better and powerful.

To replace all invalid character in path when pasting:

Right click ArcClip icon in Systray.
Click Edit Clips/Macros….
Click Permanent Clips/Macros.
In the Default or in the your newly created group, click New.
Click Clip Type then ArsClip Macro
Click Clip Type then Ignore new line characters in scripts.
Type a name you want in Menu Caption textbox.

Paste these lines in Clip to Paste textarea.

[CLIPBOARDFIND="\" REPLACE="＼"]
[CLIPBOARDFIND="/" REPLACE="／"]
[CLIPBOARDFIND=":" REPLACE="："]
[CLIPBOARDFIND="*" REPLACE="＊"]
[CLIPBOARDFIND="?" REPLACE="？"]
[CLIPBOARDFIND="<" REPLACE="＜"]
[CLIPBOARDFIND=">" REPLACE="＞"]
[CLIPBOARDFIND="|" REPLACE="ǀ"]
[CLIPBOARDFIND="""" REPLACE="＂"]
[PASTEDEFAULT]

For convenience, set Global hotkey.