The following table includes characters or symbols that you should try to avoid when developing developing files that will eventually be used for cross-platform applications. The table also includes recommended substitutes.
| AVOID | USE |
| € (bullet) | * (asterisk) |
| " " (smart quotes) | " (regular quote) |
| \= (not equal) | <> |
| < (less than or equal to) | <= |
| > (greater than or equal to) | >= |
| … (ellipsis) | ... (three periods) |
| – (em dash) | --(two hyphens) |
You also need to be careful how you name your files-- this is particularly true for Mac users. Macintosh and DOS have different ways of naming files and folders. DOS uses the 8.3 format. DOS requires that you name files using file names that are eight or fewer characters long with an optional three character extension. You must also remember not to use any of the following characters:
| asterisk (*) | backslash (\) | brackets ([]) |
| colon (:) | comma (,) | double quotation mark ("") |
| equal sign (=) | greater than(>) | at sign (@) |
| less than (<) | period (.) | plus sign (+) |
| question mark (?) | semicolon (;) | slash (/) |
| space ( ) | vertical bar(|) | characters with ASCII values less than 32 |
