Naming output rasters
Release 9.3 Last modified April 24, 2009	Print all topics in : "Performing analysis in Spatial Analyst"

Note: This topic was updated for 9.3.1.

Some characters are not allowed in the name of an output raster.

• To avoid problems with the English character set it is recommended to limit the name to contain only letters of the alphabet (A to Z, a to z), digits (0 to 9), underscores ('_') and hyphens ('-'). The plus ('+') symbol is also acceptable.
  
• Special characters that are explicitly not allowed are:
  

(  (open parenthesis)      )  (close parenthesis)
{  (open brace)            }  (close brace)
[  (open bracket)          ]  (close bracket)
\  (backslash)             ~  (tilde)
'  (single quote)          "  (double quote) 
,  (comma)                '
'  (space)




• The word 'con' should not be used.
  
• It is generally recommended to have the first letter of a raster name be a character instead of a number or symbol.
  

ESRI Grid format

The ESRI GRID format raster has some more specific restrictions:

• The maximum number of characters is 13.
  
• Cannot start with a number.
  
• Cannot have spaces.
  
• Cannot use special characters other than underscore ('_').
  
• For tools that output a GRID Stack, the stack name cannot have more than 9 characters.
  

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