What characters are allowed in ClearCase activity name?

Question

I want to write script for internal issue tracking system, integrated with ClearCase, that checks activity name (typed by user) for illegal characters. Unfortunatly, I can't find list of characters, allowed by ClearCase. Does anybody know where to get it?

UPD: I'm looking for a link to a document, that specifies the allowed characters (or says that all characters are allowed).

Answer 1

Regarding mkactivity (the command used for creating activity), there is:

• no special limitation for the activity headline

• follow the same limitations than any other clearcase object ID name (see below):

  cmd-context mkactivity -headline "Create directories" create_directories Created activity "create_directories". Set activity "create_directories" in view "webo_integ".

alt text http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cchelp/v7r0m0/topic/com.ibm.rational.clearcase.hlp.doc/cc_main/images/activity.gif

The cleartool man page about arguments in cleartool command is clear:

In object-creation commands, you must compose the object name according to these rules:

• It must contain only letters, digits, and the special characters underscore (_), period (.), and hyphen (-).
  A hyphen cannot be used as the first character of a name.
• It must not be an integer; this restriction includes octal and hexadecimal integer values. However, noninteger names are allowed.
• It must not be one of the special names “ . “, “ .. “, or “ ... “.

cleartool supports object names of up to 1024 bytes in length, although Windows imposes a limit of 260 bytes on object names.