riml@softart.UUCP (Research in Motion Limited) (02/21/89)
[Considerable verbiage about forward and back slashes NOT repeated] It appears that some posters have missed the point about allowing BOTH forward and back slashes in a file specification. DOS DOESN'T CARE. The shell does, and DOS commands use SWITCHAR as the switch character (which causes problems if it is '/'), but the low-level DOS uses EITHER ONE. Try it and see if you don't believe it. Many people use other shells, such as the MKS korn shell. For this shell the path delimiters are forward slashes, especially in environment variables. However, some DOS programs start off by assuming backslashes for path delimiters. If they are trying to construct a path to a pre-determined set of subdirectories, they may prepend or append an extra path section onto these variables, or onto a pathname specified on the command line with forward slashes. This will construct a complete path THAT CONTAINS BOTH FORWARD AND BACK SLASHES. If they then parse this pathname, and they don't understand both delimiters, the program will not function as expected. The question of which delimiter to use for the "switch" character should have nothing to do with which is used in the path. There is no whitespace surrounding the delimiter when it is used in a path. Since the normal UN*X command line parsing conventions assume that there is AT LEAST ONE WHITESPACE CHARACTER between an argument and the next switch character, this provides an easy way of telling the difference. There. I've said my piece. Flames would be silly :-) Michael A. Barnstijn V.P. Software Systems USENET: ...!uunet!watmath!softart!riml Research In Motion Limited PHONE: (519) 888-7465 Suite 6, 465 Phillip Street, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 6C7 My opinions sometimes reflect my company's opinions, and sometimes not. It depends on how many shares I have at the time :-)
dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (02/24/89)
In article <51@softart.UUCP> riml@softart.UUCP (Research in Motion Limited) writes: >It appears that some posters have missed the point about allowing >BOTH forward and back slashes in a file specification. > >[MS-DOS] DOESN'T CARE. Exactly. I suggest the general programming philosphy: Don't second-guess the operating system. If MS-DOS will accept a pathname, your program should not prevent its use. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi ARPA: bsu-cs!dhesi@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu