Not sure how to handle space character

[Jon_King]

If disallowing a subdir with a space in the name which is correct:

Disallow:/new directory/

or

Disallow:/new%20directory/

[jatar_k]

spaces aren't really valid in directory names or urls so I am not sure there is a valid format for robots.txt

I looked around at a bunch of tutorials and saw no references

[Jon_King]

Yes, I wouldn't have used the space, but it's something tough to get changed in this particular organization.

I couldn't find a reference to it either.

[encyclo]

I would disallow both versions to cover both bases, but I would but the version with the space last in the robots.txt file in case it causes a parse error for some bots.

The trouble is, with no certainty of exactly how this situation is supposed to be handled, you can expect problems. Is it possible to add a robots meta tag to those pages also?

[Jon_King]

A follow up. It seems the %20 does indeed hang/confuse some bots. Repeated requests for the robots.txt, and the pages in the disallowed directory are indexed.