john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) (04/05/88)
-- Whatever the outcome of the current round of discussions on better pathing mechanisms, here is a suggestion which might be helpful now and also in any future implementations: Whenever opening a file which may exist as part of a path (either because you have written a PATH: device or because you try to open <file>, s:<file>, c:<file>, etc), try all the possibilities once with pr_WindowPtr set to null and again with it set back to its default value. What does this buy you? Well if you are going to search disk1:, disk2:, disk3:, and disk4: and the file is on disk4: which is mounted, you find it immediately without having to pop up requesters for unmounted disks; this would help with things like the search path for includes and libraries in Aztec C. And, if you don't have the file on any currently mounted disk, you are then prompted for those disks one by one in order to make sure each is checked; this might be helpful with things like the current path implementation, and in the way Shell searches its $_path variable -- ie no requesters leading to many "command not found"'s because the right disk wasn't mounted. John -- "Do you support capitalism?" "No sir! Our party feels that free enterprise under God is the best system!" "Er, that's what capitalism is..." -- a guy starting his own religious political party here