Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/12/22/06:49:57
On Tue, 21 Dec 1999 shanec AT mindspring DOT com wrote:
> C:\djgpp\bin>rm \\ga016f95\sys\cla\shane\test
> c:/djgpp/bin/rm: //ga016f95/sys/cla/shane/test: No such file or
> directory (ENOENT)
Short answer: DJGPP doesn't support UNCs, so you cannot have them.
Long answer: supporting UNCs in the library is a royal pain because
DOS functions don't accept UNC pathnames, they need a drive letter.
However, DOS doesn't have any way of mapping a UNC to the
corresponding drive letter, except by walking the list of 32 possible
drives and finding its UNC. You need to do that walk for every system
call that uses a UNC, since the mapping between UNCs and drive letters
is dynamic and can change behind your back. This would tremendously
slow down the library functions that refer to file names. So we don't
do that.
The reason that `rm' (and all the other programs from the Fileutils
package) convert all backslashes to forward slashes is that the
assumption about forward slashes is scattered throughout the entire
sources of all the programs. By converting the backslashes up front,
the DJGPP port supports DOS-style file names with backslashes without
requiring a massive amount of changes to the program sources.
> The reason for this is due to the threading nature of a program I
> wrote. I can easily exceed the maximum number of mapped drives
> available to the OS, so UNCs are used to access server resourcers
> without tying up a drive letter.
I suggest to rethink this design decision. You have up to 32 drives
at your disposal; if that is not enough (but please explain why), I'm
sure alternative solutions could be found if you explain what are you
trying to do that you need so many different drives. Going the UNC
path is IMHO a dead end.
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