Is there a cross-platform Java method to remove fi

Question

I'm making a cross-platform application that renames files based on data retrieved online. I'd like to sanitize the Strings I took from a web API for the current platform.

I know that different platforms have different file-name requirements, so I was wondering if there's a cross-platform way to do this?

Edit: On Windows platforms you cannot have a question mark '?' in a file name, whereas in Linux, you can. The file names may contain such characters and I would like for the platforms that support those characters to keep them, but otherwise, strip them out.

Also, I would prefer a standard Java solution that doesn't require third-party libraries.

Answer 1

If you want to use more than like [A-Za-z0-9], then check MS Naming Conventions, and dont forget to filter out "...Characters whose integer representations are in the range from 1 through 31,...", like the example of Aaron Digulla does. The code e.g. from David Carboni would not be sufficient for these chars.

Answer 2

Here is the code I use:

public static String sanitizeName( String name ) {
    if( null == name ) {
        return "";
    }

    if( SystemUtils.IS_OS_LINUX ) {
        return name.replaceAll( "/+", "" ).trim();
    }

    return name.replaceAll( "[\u0001-\u001f<>:\"/\\\\|?*\u007f]+", "" ).trim();
}

SystemUtils is from Apache commons-lang3