Graph - clicking on linked note creates a new untitled note instead of navigating to that note - due to bad filename handling

Bug graveyard
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#1

Steps to reproduce

  1. In local graph click on linked note

Expected result

I assume it should always navigate to that linked pre-existing note (does usually).

Actual result

Creates a new untitled note instead. Seems to occur mainly when starting on new notes linked to only one or two other linked notes.

Environment

  • Operating system:
    MacOS
  • Obsidian version:
    0.9.12

Additional information

#2

We had another bug report like this and we did not quite figure out what happened.

Are you using a cloud sync?
Do you see errors in console?

If you have reproducible steps, that would help a lot.

The other bug report was on windows with google drive.

EDIT: Link to the other bug report
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/local-graph-and-blank-page-results/8346/1

#3

Not syncing Obsidian (other than iCloud syncing Documents folder)

I’ve played with it a bit more and found that it only occurs for notes in my “# New Notes” folder.

  1. Say Note A and Note B are both in the new notes folder…

  2. I’ll open Note A in edit & preview, so a local graph shows Note A is linked to Note B.

  3. I click on “Note B” node in the local graph but instead of navigating there it creates a new note “untitled” in the new notes folder. It also creates a new untitled note if I click on Note A node itself.
    (…I have also just found it behaves the same way using the main graph view, so this is not local graph specific, but specific to the new notes folder)

  4. If I move Note A to another folder, I can click on its node and it doesn’t create a new note, but will still create a new note if I click on Note B. If I move Note A back to the new notes folder it behaves as in step 3 above again.

hope this helps.

#4

I reproduced the bug. We don’t support the character # in filepaths. Don’t use it.

#5

This is another case of Poor Handling of `#` character in the filepath

1 Like
#6

ok - thanks!

#7

… I think I have noticed odd things happening with “#” in note names (ie filename) in the past.

Are there other characters not to use in filepaths our filenames? Apologies if this is covered somewhere in help or a forum, I’m still looking around for answers.

#8

you can get a list of the other chars by typing * in the filename. We will try to reworks how obsidian works to reduce the number of forbidden chars in the future.

#9

Great - thanks!

#10

…Interesting:
I typed * in the filename and saw the list of forbidden characters, but # wasn’t included (should that be changed/updated?)

…I was also wandering: Can @ can be used in filenames instead of # without any problems? (I’ve mentioned elsewhere in a thread on Endnote citation format).

#11
#12

I have also had this happen several times. Not sure how to reproduce it.

Edit:
I did find the “#” sign in the title was the issue as stated above. That is also the reason it hasn’t happened for a while, as I was having issues assigning links to files and found that to be the culprit there too and eliminated them all a couple days ago.