cstruble@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Craig Struble) (04/26/91)
I had an interesting bug appear yesterday. There was a file on my Mac partition that was named .openwin-menu that I wanted to move to A/UX. While under mac24, I dragged the file as I normally would have from the Mac partition to the A/UX parition, and then, MacsBug popped up with an exception. I tried this numerous times, and the same error popped up. Renaming the file to just openwin-menu allowed me to move the file successfully. Is this a documented problem in the A/UX 2.0 manuals (I have the 1.0 manuals, but since Va. Tech moved to using Amiga 3000's for CS students, I can't get my hands on 2.0 manuals)? If not, has anyone else moved a file beginning with a . successfully under A/UX 2.0.1 mac24? Thanks, Craig -- Craig Struble Sysop of The Toaster (703)951-4308 Va. Tech CS Student Mac and A/UX support (Fidonet 1:151/118.1) cstruble@vttcf.cc.vt.edu Va. Tech wins 3rd place in the ACM cstruble@gnu.ai.mit.edu International Programming Contest
murphy@hao.hao.ucar.edu (Murphy) (04/26/91)
This is a "feature" of the Finder, when copying files whose names begin with a period between filesystems (I think) and is not A/UX dependent. I had a similar problem under MacOS copying a .joverc file---took ages to track down what was going wrong because the file in question was buried about four levels deep and there were no obvious clues as to what the problem was. The problem derives (I seem to recall) from the fact that the MacOS drivers have names that begin with a period. Graham Murphy High Altitude Observatory National Center for Atmospheric Research P.O. Box 3000, Boulder CO 80307-3000. Ph:(303)497-1565; Fax:(303)497-1137. INTERNET: murphy@hao.UCAR.EDU; Solar PO: GMurphy@SOLAR
ksand@Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik, 120dB or more) (04/26/91)
In article <11189@ncar.ucar.edu> murphy@hao.hao.ucar.edu (Murphy) writes: >This is a "feature" of the Finder, when copying files whose >names begin with a period between filesystems (I think) and is >not A/UX dependent. >I had a similar problem under MacOS copying a .joverc >file---took ages to track down what was going wrong because the >file in question was buried about four levels deep and there >were no obvious clues as to what the problem was. The problem >derives (I seem to recall) from the fact that the MacOS drivers have >names that begin with a period. Well, it's not problem, it's a MacOS system dependency! :-). All driver names should start with a '.', and beware those end users who would like to name their files with a starting dot. Kent Sandvik -- Kent Sandvik, DTS junkie
sysmark@aurora.physics.utoronto.ca (Mark Bartelt) (05/03/91)
In article <13188@goofy.Apple.COM> ksand@Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik, 120dB or more) writes: | In article <11189@ncar.ucar.edu> murphy@hao.hao.ucar.edu (Murphy) writes: | | >This is a "feature" of the Finder, when copying files whose | >names begin with a period between filesystems (I think) and is | >not A/UX dependent. | | Well, it's not problem, it's a MacOS system dependency! :-). All | driver names should start with a '.', and beware those end users | who would like to name their files with a starting dot. For the benefit of us UNIXoids who know very little about either MacOS or A/UX, could you elaborate a bit? Despite the smiley, I don't know whether your comment was intended to be humourous, flippant, serious, or two (or all three) of the above. Are you saying that, despite the fact that Mac files have file types associated with them, the finder nonetheless uses the *name* of the file to decide whether something is a driver or not? If so, isn't this a horrible botch even in the MacOS world? And regardless, it's totally unacceptable in an A/UX environment, given the preponderance of files whose names begin with '.' under UNIX. Is something terribly wrong with A/UX in this regard, or have I just missed a joke that floated over my head? Mark Bartelt 416/978-5619 Canadian Institute for mark@cita.toronto.edu Theoretical Astrophysics mark@cita.utoronto.ca
rmtodd@servalan.uucp (Richard Todd) (05/04/91)
sysmark@aurora.physics.utoronto.ca (Mark Bartelt) writes: >Are you saying that, despite the fact that Mac files have file types >associated with them, the finder nonetheless uses the *name* of the >file to decide whether something is a driver or not? If so, isn't Actually, I believe it's the low-level file-handling code in MacOS, so *every* MacOS app gets hit by it, not the finder. >this a horrible botch even in the MacOS world? And regardless, it's It *is* a horrible botch, IMHO. They shoulda gone the Unix approach and had device special files. Alas, it's 7 years too late to fix this... >totally unacceptable in an A/UX environment, given the preponderance >of files whose names begin with '.' under UNIX. Rather annoying, yes. A/UX does make some attempt to get around this; if you notice on a Finder display of ones home directory under A/UX, one will see the usual .-files (except for "." and "..") with the "." changed to the "big-dot" character in the extended char set used by MacOS. Alas, the translation isn't implemented the other way. It may not be *possible* to do it the other way cleanly, as there's probably entirely too much code, inside MacOS and out, that *depends* on being able to open those drivers. >Is something terribly wrong with A/UX in this regard, or have I just >missed a joke that floated over my head? The basic problem is one common to lots of environments, namely mapping one filesystem with one set of restrictions on name content/format to another. The same sort of thing happens with people running MS-DOS and mounting NFS filesystems from Unix hosts, or running VP/ix or similar MS-DOS emulation packages under Unix. No matter what algorithm you choose for mapping filenames from one FS to another, somebody's going to get screwed by it. -- Richard Todd rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us rmtodd@servalan.uucp "Elvis has left Bettendorf!"
ksand@Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik, 120dB or more) (05/05/91)
In article <1991May3.141724.23954@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> mark@cita.toronto.edu writes: >Are you saying that, despite the fact that Mac files have file types >associated with them, the finder nonetheless uses the *name* of the >file to decide whether something is a driver or not? If so, isn't >this a horrible botch even in the MacOS world? And regardless, it's >totally unacceptable in an A/UX environment, given the preponderance >of files whose names begin with '.' under UNIX. >Is something terribly wrong with A/UX in this regard, or have I just >missed a joke that floated over my head? Compability means that every feature and every *limitation/bug* has to be implemented 1:1. This is true of network protocols, CPU design, operating system emulation and document architectures. Kent Sandvik, who has seen vt220 emulation packages that will break because they fixed a DEC bug. -- Kent Sandvik, DTS Rock Lobster Disclaimer: I am not working with Public Relations.