Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Michael Davidsaver via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Mon, 23 Jan 2023 18:33:27 -0800

On 1/23/23 12:11, Rolf Keitel via Tech-talk wrote:

This sentence tells me what’s legal for a record name, but not what a legal record name is.

As you have found, historically there were few technical restrictions on record names.
The current restrictions, some of which are so far only warnings, can be found here:

https://github.com/epics-base/epics-base/blob/3293a29d59577df6e975978eace0c9fa7bbe9df1/modules/database/src/ioc/dbStatic/dbLexRoutines.c#L1063-L1096

The hard restriction is that record names can't contain any of the follow characters:

' ', '\t', '"', '\'', '.', '$'

(space, tab, double or single quote, dot/period, or dollar sign)

Further, those interested in forward compatibility are strongly recommended to avoid
record names beginning with any of:

'-', '+', '[', '{'

or contain any ASCII non-printable (those less than 32 / space)

Also, record names which begin with a number are valid, can't be targeted by a link.

fyi. our most recent discussion on this topic can be found at:

https://github.com/epics-base/epics-base/pull/78

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System