The second dialog is the one from the VS2010 productivity power tools pack - I havent used it myself so dont know of any problems with it. Have you recently installed this?
Leom Burke
2010-07-09 21:33:38
+3
A:
Ah, I think that is it. I did in fact install the Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools a couple of weeks ago. I got it primarily for the Document Well functionality. On the list of other feature is "Searchable Add Reference Dialog" with a link to a good discussion around the new dialog versus the standard one. I'd vote the answer up if I had any reputation. Thanks!
Josh Hemann
2010-07-09 21:43:37
@Josh - I have the Pro Power Tools pack installed and mimicked the same directory structure as you and got the same error, nice find! I'm sure they can fix this if it's reported.
John Rasch
2010-07-09 21:50:45
+9
A:
My opinion is that if you use weird characters in paths, you get what you deserve. :)
I know there are bugs about '#' character in paths in the core VS product, in addition to whatever may be in the Pro Power Tools extension. There is a surprising amount of code that goes to/from URIs and filenames, and '#' characters (and everything thereafter) get dropped when roundtripping via a System.Uri.
In general, I think it's safe to assume that when creating filenames/paths, there will be 10,000 tools of various quality trying to parse the filenames, and a (large) subset of those tools will fail on 'weird' characters. Just avoid weird characters whenever possible. You gotta choose your battles. In an ideal world, tools would be robust to these kinds of issues. In the real world, it's better to name a path "CSharp" rather than "C#" and move on with more important things in life.
Brian
2010-07-09 21:48:48
Why was this downvoted? You never know what OS your files might end up on, and not everything is supported by everyone.
Jouke van der Maas
2010-07-09 21:56:49
Thanks for answering my first question; the URI issue is good to know. I think your final advice of "move on with more important things in life" is spot on. I just wanted to know if folks developing with Microsoft tools consider the # issue obvious. Again, it was not to me considering C# and F# projects would lend themselves to #s in filenames/paths.
Josh Hemann
2010-07-09 21:57:34
I think it is not obvious unless (1) you've been bitten by it already or (2) you've written your own filename parsing tools and realize that every app that does it is likely to have bugs.
Brian
2010-07-09 22:20:03
@MichaelMrozek - some visitors to SO are sensitive flowers who cannot distinguish banter from invective.
APC
2010-07-11 07:10:47
+1 So true. Spent a day last week trying to install Oracle in a directory that contained a `(`, as in `Program Files (x86)`. If the Win64 designers had chosen a name like this answer suggests, countless compatibility issues would have been avoided.
Andomar
2010-07-11 10:16:51
@APC: I found this question through the flagged list and am also puzzled why it's flagged; however, comments like your last really do make the situation worse.
Roger Pate
2010-07-11 22:53:20