Why are certain characters missing or replaced in the file and folder names of my downloaded archive?

Background

When downloading an archive, you may notice that certain special characters have been removed or replaced in your file and folder names. To ensure your downloaded ZIP file works reliably across all operating systems (Windows, macOS, and Linux), Procore sanitizes these names during the extract creation process. Leaving unsupported characters in the file names could produce corrupt or unopenable ZIP files on your operating system.

Answer

During this sanitization process, the following adjustments are made:

  • Characters forbidden by Windows, such as < > : " / \ | ? * and macOS/Linux, such as / and null bytes are replaced with _.

  • Commas (,) and hashes (#) are excluded because they can cause issues in URLs, shell commands, or certain file-system tools.

  • Curly braces ({ }) and control characters (ASCII 0–31) are also replaced with underscores (_).

  • Non-printable characters (ASCII < 32) are excluded.

See Also