Cannot open WebDAV folders containing special characters

[Dylan Taylor]

This particular bug is incredibly important to me. At the university I'm studying at (Penn State), we are given a "P Drive", which we use to store all of our files. The P drive can be remotely accessed via WebDAV using the following credentials (via File > Connect to Server... in Nautilus):
Service Type: Secure WebDAV (HTTPS)
Server: pdrive.bd.psu.edu
Folder: studentweb/dmt5235 (replace dmt5235 with your username)
User: dmt5235 [your penn state access account name]
For security purposes, I won't be providing my password.

I first noticed the problem when I tried to access a folder I named "Miscellaneous C++ Projects", because when I tried to access it, I would get a message saying "Could not display '[path to share]'. Error: Response invalid. Please select another viewer and try again." At first I thought it was the spaces, as other folders worked, and they didn't contain any spaces. However, replacing them with underscores didn't work. In fact, creating a folder called "untitled folder" works, and I can open it just like any other folder. It was then obvious to me that the '+' character was preventing me from opening the folder. Renaming it to "Miscellaneous CPP Projects" did the trick for me. However, I often use special characters in my folder names, and it is incredibly inconvenient to have to rename all of my folders to be able to open them. This shouldn't even be necessary. I should just be able to open this folder without having to go out of my way to rename it. I am running Linux Mint 11 with all patches installed as of August 26, 2011 10:50AM EST. This bug is reproducible every time. I decided to test which characters the bug occurs with to help the developers fix the problem. I will only be listing special characters that occur on a standard 104 key US keyboard. Each character is separated by a space. I'm pretty sure that this is an issue with nautilus and it is relevant to upstream Ubuntu/Debian/GNOME releases as well. Also, it's worth noting that accessing a folder with these special characters works _perfectly_ in the cadaver terminal client. Any characters not listed (excluding numbers and letters) are not tested. In order for a character to be listed as not working, I needed to be able to create a directory with that character in the name and try to open it without success.

Characters That Work Perfectly: ~ ! @ # $ % ( ) ' , . - _ = ;
Characters That Do NOT Work: + ` ^ & { } [ ]
Special Characters Not Tested: | * "

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[123vier (flowrist)]

This also applies to the special characters of a german layout like ö ä ü etc.