Re: [bug #712] GNU make can't handle spaces in pathnames

[Edward Welbourne]

> I have always wondered why we did not pick another
> character than ascii 32 to represent space in file names.

That would involve the disk driver - or all software that creates files
- mapping the space the user typed to the chosen codepoint.  There are
then a whole load of other places software (e.g. directory listing and
searching for a name) would have to correctly remember the mapping;
there's a lot of complexity hiding behind this simple idea.  Not
impossible, but not costless either !  Using the non-breaking space
(i.e.   in HTML) would probably make sense, though; and plenty of
software does already grok it as sort-of-equivalent-to-space.

        Eddy.