Issue with creating a Recent Files menu...

[Paul Dupuis]

A colleague kindly pointed out that in the User Guide, it states:

"To put an & or / character in the text of a menu, double the characters: && or
//.

Putting the ( character anywhere in a line disables the menu item. To put a (
character in a menu item without disabling it, precede it with a backslash:
\(."

So that still leaves whether there is any way to escape "!"
(exclamation) or "-" (minus sign) as the first character and a "|"
(vertical bar) in the file name?

I can build a test stack an try !! and -- and \! and \- and so on, but I
was hoping some one had a definitive answer.



On 12/1/2015 5:30 PM, Paul Dupuis wrote:
> I have an issue with creating a "Recent Files" menu and I am wondering
> if anyone on the list has a work-around:
>
> I do not want to pose any restrictions on files names other than what
> the operating system itself does.
>
> So I build a menu of file names. However, special characters in menu
> items create accelerator keys, disable menus, set or unset check boxes
> and so on:
>
> Dictionary for "menu" excerpt:
> The syntax for menu item strings is:
>   [<flags>] <label> ['/' <accelerator> ['|' <tag>]]
>
> Where <flags> may include:
>   !<c|n|r>   (the menu item has respectively, a check, no check, or a
> selected radio button)
>   ((the menu item is disabled)
>   -(the menu item is replaced with a menu separator)
>   multiple tab characters   (where the number of tabs specifes the depth
> of the menu item.  Use this to create submenus)
>
> So, since a file name CAN begin with ! or ( or - (but not tab), is there
> a way to 'escape' these characters in the menu system so they are
> displayed normally? Replacing / with // works to escape a / in the name.
> What about the vertical bar "|"?
>
> I tried escaping a ! at the start of a name with /! and that does not work.
>
> Thank you for any answers,
>
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