Restrictions
Summary
Dendron disallows certain characters and or patterns in the file name of a note.
Details
There are a few restrictions on how you can name your notes. This is mainly due to compatibility across different platforms, as well as some restrictions that are imposed by VSCode.
⚠️ Introduction of new restrictions are very rare, but it can happen in the future.
In that case, a detailed guide will be provided on how to automatically fix your existing notes' file names so that they conform to the new restrictions.
Automatically finding and fixing invalid filenames
You can use the Doctor command with the action fixInvalidFileNames to find and fix invalid filenames.
If an automatic fix is not possible, the doctor command will notify you with the file names that were not automatically fixable so that you can manually review and rename them.
Restrictions
Empty hierarchies
Hierarchies cannot be empty strings. This means:
- file names (excluding the
.mdextension) cannot start or end with a., which delineates a hierarchy. - file names cannot have consecutive dots.
# good
foo.bar.md
foo.bar.baz.md
# bad
foo..baz.md
.foo.md
foo..md
Mixed case
When you lookup a note, the query ignores cases. VSCode will also not allow you to have two files with mixed cases but same characters.
To avoid confusion, we recommend using lower-kebab-case for all your notes if possible, and keep the casing consistent at minimum on a per-hierarchy basis.
# good
foo.md
foo-bar.md
# bad
Foo.md
fOO.md
FoO.md
Foo_Bar.md
Symbols / special characters
There are a few non-alphanumeric characters that are disallowed in filenames due to compatibility across different platforms and backends.
Currently these are the disallowed characters:
((open parentheses))(close parentheses)'(single quote),(comma)
We recommend replacing the occurences of these symbols to -, or refactor the note to have a simpler file name that doesn't require special characters to be described.
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