Use numbers at the beginning of the project name

scuy · April 16, 2025, 10:40am

When I use a number at the beginning of the project name, “sketch_” is automatically added to the beginning of the saved name. Is this by design? Is there a setting to avoid this?

sableraph · April 16, 2025, 10:53am

Hi scuy, welcome to the community!

Processing sanitizes file names to ensure compatibility across different file systems and platforms. Sketch names that begin with a digit or anything other than a letter aren’t allowed, so Processing automatically adds sketch_ in those cases. There’s no setting to change this behavior at the moment.

The relevant code is here, if you’re curious.

Let us know if you have more questions!

github.com/processing/processing4

app/src/processing/app/Sketch.java

ecd219b03


      
          /**
           * Produce a sanitized name that fits our standards for likely to work.
           * <p/>
           * Java classes have a wider range of names that are technically allowed
           * (supposedly any Unicode name) than what we support. The reason for
           * going more narrow is to avoid situations with text encodings and
           * converting during the process of moving files between operating
           * systems, i.e. uploading from a Windows machine to a Linux server,
           * or reading a FAT32 partition in OS X and using a thumb drive.
           * <p/>
           * This helper function replaces everything but A-Z, a-z, and 0-9 with
           * underscores. Also disallows starting the sketch name with a digit
           * or underscore.
           * <p/>
           * In Processing 2.0, sketches can no longer begin with an underscore,
           * because these aren't valid class names on Android.

scuy · April 16, 2025, 12:27pm

@sableraph

Thank you for your detailed explanation.
I’m glad I was able to understand the specifications.

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Use numbers at the beginning of the project name

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