Hi all,
I’ve been asked several times to allow dots (“.”) as a valid character in device names.
My question is … are dots officially allowed? I remember that in Tango 8 database (~2014) the usage of dots and spaces in device names was causing problems on writing/retrieval of properties.
Was this already solved? Which is the list of “officially accepted characters”?
Sergi
Hi Sergi,
As far as I know, the only reserved characters are defined in this documentation section:
https://tango-controls.readthedocs.io/en/latest/development/general-guidelines/naming.html?highlight=naming#reserved-words-and-characters-limitations
So I think dots are not forbidden in device names but I would definitely avoid spaces and tabs which can be confusing because you might not see them well in jive.
Are there still bugs related to that? I don’t know.
Use it if you feel lucky, and report any issue you might encounter! I made a quick test creating devices with dots using jive 7.19 and it seems to work fine.
Reynald
Hi, Sergi, we are interested in using dots, thank you for you question. 
I remember we talked about this with Pascal and Reynald in TANGO meeting in Firenze so the answer of Reynald is comforting.
Thanks guys.