The ability to graphically browse remote servers via SSH is great, but I found out that trying to edit a remote file chokes Vim. Apparently the netrw module does not handle an SSH URI, but rather prefers SCP. So a quick nautilus-script to the rescue.

#!/usr/bin/env python
 
import os, sys
import re
import urllib
 
files = []
 
def unescape(uri):
    return re.sub(r'\s', r'\ ', urllib.unquote(uri))
 
for file in os.getenv("NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS", None).split("\n"):
 
    if re.match(r'^file://', file):
        files.append(unescape(re.sub(r'^file://', r"", file)))
 
    elif re.match(r'^ssh://', file):
        files.append(unescape(re.sub(r'^ssh://([^/]+)(/[^/]+){2}/(.*)$', r'scp:///', file)))
 
    else:
        pass
 
if files:
    os.system("""gvim """ + " ".join(files))
 
sys.exit(0)
 

Still some work to do, but for now it’s simple and effective.

I modified the form to create a unique filename using values from certain form elements. Since these values can, and often do, use characters that are invalid as part of a filename, I needed a way to “sanitize” the name during the submission process. I wrote the following VBScript code to replace these characters before attempting to save the file.

 
   Function SanitizeFilename(byVal strFilename, byVal strReplChar)	
      
      Set objRegExp = New RegExp ' Create new RegExp object
      
      ' Define regex pattern and set Global replacement property
      objRegExp.Pattern = "[\x00-\x1f\x22\\/:\*\?<>\|]"
      objRegExp.Global = True
      
      ' Check strReplChar parameter for invalid length or character,
      ' default to underscore
      If Len(strReplChar) = 1 Then 
         strReplChar = objRegExp.Replace(strReplChar, "_")
      Else 
         strReplChar = "_"
      End If
      
      ' Return clean filename
      SanitizeFilename = objRegExp.Replace(strFilename, strReplChar)
      
      Set objRegExp = Nothing
   End Function
 
 

This function accepts two arguments, strFilename which receives the string created from the form values, and strReplChar which receives the character used for replacement. The function uses a regular expression pattern to match the invalid characters (control characters through 31, double-quotes, and a handful of others). There is a check to make sure that the strReplChar argument is valid, but not much else. The RegExp Object member Replace does the heavy lifting, before the function returns the modified string.

The regex pattern replaces invalid characters for Windows NTFS (generally), but could easily be altered for other OS file systems. You could also use a more restrictive regular expression like:

      [^\w\x20\&%'`\-\@{}~!#\(\)&_\^\+,\.=\[\]]

Then again, that may be a bit much. Wikipedia has a good filename reference that includes a fairly comprehensive list of reserved words and allowable character sets. As always, if you need a good regex reference, try Regular-Expressions.info.

UPDATE: The logic in my if/then statement to check the length and validity of the strReplChar was backwards. The example has been corrected.