Can't import files with ";" in the pathname

zbiener

Using the "Import" command, I can't seem to import any files whose path includes the character ";". I am importing a bibtex library. So, a representative entry would be:

---
@book{CohenSmith02,
address = {Cambridge},
title = {The {Cambridge} Companion to {Newton}},
date = {2002},
editor = {Cohen, I. Bernard and Smith, George E.},
file = {/Users/xxx/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive/Refs/Secondary/Iliffe.R;Smith.G/IliffeSmith - The Cambridge Companion to Newton (2016).pdf}}
---

The bibliographic information is imported properly, but the files is not. The error log shows that Zotero is trying to retrieve from the path "/Users/xxx/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive/Refs/Secondary/Iliffe.R", thus truncating the actual path.

I suspect that ";" is not an allowed pathname character in Windows, but it is allowed in MacOS.

Can anyone confirm/deny that this an actual bug?

adamsmith

Hard to say if it's a bug. We've also seen bibtex export that uses ; as a delimiter between the paths for two attachments, and that's what the import is trying to address:
https://github.com/zotero/translators/blob/master/BibTeX.js#L479

Neither a filename with a semicolon nor using semicolon as a delimiter between two paths is great, but clearly both exists and I don't really see how we can reasonably handle both cases.

zbiener

I see the dilemma. In that case, it makes sense to keep things as they are.

emilianoeheyns

I think BBT will import that.

zbiener

Yes, thanks, you're right. I figured it was worth noting just in case the functionality made sense for standard Zotero.

emilianoeheyns

@adamsmith it's easy to handle - add both the literal value and the parsed value to the item's attachmemt array, and zotero will ignore the path it can't find.