CF2021 Update 21 - Schedule tasks - pathfilter.json schedulerexecutionpaths - Not recognizing "$"

@rg9436920 , thanks for sharing your experience.

rg, I can confirm that behavior--and I do have a workaround one could consider (if they didn't just rename the folder, as it seems you did).  And I also went ahead and raised a bug report for this.

For details, read on.

1) First, note also that the issue is not just in CF2021 but also CF2023 and cf2025. And it's not new since the latest update (of each of those, in July). It started with the May update (for each of them), which is indeed when the pathfilter.json file was introduced (and that is discussed further in the May update technote for each version.

As you may know, it's a security improvement, requiring one to have permission to edit that file to whitelist paths to which a scheduled task might output its results. There have long been various vulns--long since fixed--where bad guys could CREATE scheduled tasks that were configured to SAVE some file. This is intended to prevent them saving to anyplace other than what you specify in this whitelist).

2) As for the inability to specify a $ for the path, folks who may want to test this on their own (or try different possible solutions) should note first that the pathfilter.json file already has a challenge in that (even on Windows) the path is case-sensitive (including the drive letter) AND we need to use / instead of \ for path separators.

And to that point, someone might wonder if the solution for the need to specify a path with a $ is to escape it. I tried \$ and \\$, and \u0024;, as well as /$ and //$. Maybe SOME expression will work, but not those. 🙂

Finally, another challenge in exploring this is that you do need to restart CF between each attempted change to that file (it does not pick it up when editing a scheduled task).

3) So what's the workaround? Well, in your case it may not be a compelling one, since your path was indeed C:\$myPath\ and you specified C:/$myPath/**.

But those who read about the new pathfilter.json file will learn that that ** pattern rg used at the end means "and any subfolders under it". And so I was going to point out that if your path (for the file to which you wanted to save the output of a task) was something like C:\someotherpath\$myPath\, then you could use C:/someotherpath/**.

And I DID confirm that that WOULD allow you to have a folder UNDER that one that had a $, and you COULD specify that path in the scheduled task. 

But in your case, since the $myPath folder was only ONE level down from the root, that would have meant considering use of the path as C:/**,  and of course that would mean ANY folder on the C drive, which would entirely negate the intended security benefit. 🙂

Again, I offer the idea (of specifying the path ABOVE the one with the $ in its name)  in case it may help anyone else.

4) And I hope the elaboration on this whole mechanism may have helped you a bit.  Apologies if you already knew all of it. Again, I write for both the person asking the question and others who may find the thread, which nearly always happens. (Also, now AIs read these forums and we end up contributing here knowledge that even benefits those who do NOT come to these forums.)

Finally, as for the bug report, it's at https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/CF-4227719. You should add a vote (and comment, if you like), as Adobe does use votes as part of the process of deciding what to address. You would also get notified as Adobe (or others) may respond to it. Indeed, perhaps someone may see it and offer a different workaround, which they may not bother to report here (I did link to this thread there.)

Hope that's helpful. It was indeed an interesting challenge, and I had some spare time to explore with/for you. 🙂