Mailing-List:	contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe:	<mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive:	<http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post:	<mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help:	<mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender:	cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To:	mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From:	"LA Walsh" <law AT tlinx DOT org>
To:	"'Jos I. Boumans'" <kane AT dwim DOT org>,
	"'Gurusamy Sarathy'" <gsar AT ActiveState DOT com>
Cc:	<perl5-porters AT perl DOT org>, <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject:	RE: Repost, different list...File::Spec, Cygwin, Syntactic vs. Semantic path analysis
Date:	Sun, 5 Jan 2003 23:25:49 -0800
Message-ID:	<000901c2b554$d66ca580$1403a8c0@sc.tlinx.org>
MIME-Version:	1.0
X-Priority:	3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority:	Normal
In-Reply-To:	<3E189121.70901@dwim.org>
X-MimeOLE:	Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106
Importance:	Normal

> Gurusamy Sarathy wrote:
> > I agree with most of your points, and in particular with the one 
> > above. I consider File::Spec::Win32 currently broken because it 
> > hijacks all paths and turns them into the backslashed 
> variety, which 
> > is completely wrong from the portability POV.  (By which I 
> mean that 
> > utilities written for UNIX that would otherwise work on windows are 
> > now broken because of this change.)
> 
> The biggest problem with File::Spec::Win32 right now is the 
> fact that it 
> will allow _both_ types of slashes in a path. This has lead 
> to bugs like report [19213] 
> [http://rt.perl.org/rt2/Ticket/Display.html?id=19213]
> 
> For portabillity, it would be fine if either a path would be 
> represented 
> as c:\perl\5.8.0\bin\perl.exe or c:/perl/5.8.0/bin/perl.exe 
> but never as c:\perl\5.8.0/bin/perl.exe
---
	If a user calls the 'normalize' function, it should convert it to
"\" -- since that is the OS standard/default -- HOWEVER...

	the OS accepts *either* -- so having Win32 accept paths that contain
either is valid.  File Spec is supposed to provide a way to manipulate
paths that are valid on a particular OS.  It isn't a supposed to be a
"please convert me to posix, unix, or some form that someone thinks Win should
have used".

	In "cmd.exe", you can type 'dir \' or you can type 'dir "/"'.  You have
to quote the "/" so it won't be interpreted as a switch character -- but 
the underlying OS seems to not really care which you use and neither should
Win32.

	As for the bug -- it is a red-herring issue -- the user calls the
OS normal form for generating a pathname, then Perl itself choose not to
use the OS normal form for its internally generated paths.  I don't think it
is a bug to use either -- bug certainly specifying the same library twice by
two separate names shouldn't cause a core dump in any event.

-l


-----------------------


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

- Raw text -