Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

VFN

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 5, 2012
100
0
Downloaded an .mkv file, which I've done many times before, and its name had + symbols between all the words. Anyone know what this is about?

Thanks as always
 

chabig

macrumors G4
Sep 6, 2002
11,432
9,289
Those symbols are valid characters in a file name. You would have to ask whomever named the file to find out why they used them.
 

VFN

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 5, 2012
100
0
Those symbols are valid characters in a file name. You would have to ask whomever named the file to find out why they used them.
I named the file, uploaded it from my PC, then downloaded it to the Air. Done this many times and have never seen + symbols.

Only thing I can think of is that I copied the name from a Google page and pasted it into a program that adds subtitles to an mkv. Possible the Air is showing + symbols used in the Google page the PC and program don't? I've copied names from similar Google pages before and didn't have this issue
 
Last edited:

DeltaMac

macrumors G5
Jul 30, 2003
13,749
4,572
Delaware
Hmm... Copy the file (the one with spaces replaced with + ) to an external drive, then open that copied file on your PC. Does the file name still show on your PC with the same + replacing each space?
 

VFN

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 5, 2012
100
0
I removed the + symbols from the file, but I'll download it again and try your suggestion.

I'll post what I find tomorrow some time.
 

Slartibart

macrumors 68040
Aug 19, 2020
3,140
2,815
It’s the change in encoding on the web page and the other program involved. Very simplified: data in e.g. HTML forms (and elswhere 🙃) is encoded. The encoding used as default is some times based on some version of the general URI percent-encoding rules with e.g. newline normalization and replacing spaces with "+" instead of "%20".
 

VFN

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 5, 2012
100
0
Okay, so the Mac is displaying code Windows was hiding. Thanks.
 

VFN

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 5, 2012
100
0
Okay, I just downloaded the file to my PC from the host I uploaded it to and the + symbols are there, though they aren't on the host's download page. So the symbols occurred when the host uploaded/processed the file due to rules you described above. Or, since I don't know how things particularly work, when the file was downloaded.
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.