# Having to change project name to exclude underscore character undocumented?

**URL:** <https://forum.sensmetry.com/t/having-to-change-project-name-to-exclude-underscore-character-undocumented/562>\
**Category:** Bug Reports\
**Created:** [August 19, 2026, 8:31pm UTC](https://forum.sensmetry.com/t/having-to-change-project-name-to-exclude-underscore-character-undocumented/562 "2026-08-19T20:31:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Wallace](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex008/user_avatar/forum.sensmetry.com/richard_wallace/32/307_2.png) [@Richard\_Wallace](https://forum.sensmetry.com/u/Richard_Wallace)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2026, 8:31pm UTC](https://forum.sensmetry.com/t/having-to-change-project-name-to-exclude-underscore-character-undocumented/562/1 "2026-08-19T20:31:45Z")

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Unsure if this is a bug or an artifact of IRI names. I’ve searched the support and example web pages for instructions to change the .project.json name to convert ‘\_’ to ‘-’ characters prior to issuing a `sysand index add` command. If that change does not occur, then this error occurs:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex008/uploads/syside/original/1X/450f833fd91e371b88c6409534cadb118f82e78e.png)

The real issue is notification to the user that the ‘\_’ character in the .project.json “name” parameter is not allowed. If I’ve somehow missed this, please indicate which webpage it is documented on.

Using sysand 0.2.0 under Windows 10, CMD shell.

In my testing directory `\my_project`

The `.project.json` created in that directory contains:

```auto
{
     "name": "my_project",
     "publisher": "MyTestOrg",
     "version": "0.0.1"
}

```

After changing the name to `"my-project"` deleting the index.json, output\*.kpar, and then issuing the commands.

`sysand index init`  
`sysand build`  
`sysand index add --kpar-path outputmy_project-0.0.1.kpar`

All works as intended.

V/r,

Richard

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Andrius\_Puksta](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex008/user_avatar/forum.sensmetry.com/andrius_puksta/32/187_2.png) [@Andrius\_Puksta](https://forum.sensmetry.com/u/Andrius_Puksta)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2026, 6:00am UTC](https://forum.sensmetry.com/t/having-to-change-project-name-to-exclude-underscore-character-undocumented/562/2 "2026-08-20T06:00:30Z")

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Thanks for reporting this!

The requirements for `sysand index add` command are indeed not documented. For publisher/name it has the same requirements as [sysand.com](http://sysand.com), which are documented at [Project identifiers - Sysand documentation](https://docs.sysand.com/index/reference/project-identifiers/#project-json-fields).

I’ll update the command documentation and the error messages to make both requirements and fixes clear.

Best regards,  
Andrius