Subject: RE: Buglist
From: [email-masked] (Stephan Mueller)

7 Apr 1997 12:45:41 -0700
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Original-To: "'Jim Balter'" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
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On NT, what Jim says is correct.  The 'multi-dot' paths being discussed
are probably a special bonus feature (ahem) of the DOS and Windows 95
command.com shells.

In a Windows 95 command.com box, a reference to a directory name
consisting of n dots means the n-1st parent directory.  Thus
	cd ...
is equivalent to
	cd ..\..

It is interesting that this notation works with non-command.com exes as
well, so it may be that the Win95 implementation of Win32 generally
supports this.

stephan();

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Jim Balter [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Friday, April 04, 1997 7:10 PM
> To:	[email-masked]
> Cc:	[email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject:	Re: Buglist
> 
> [email-masked] wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Tim, you wrote:
> > 
> > :  . Bash doesn't understand drive letters, multi-dot relative paths
> > :    (eg. "cd ..."), or UNC pathnames (eg. //host/resource).
> > 
> > What is a multi-dot path, please? I never saw ... only know . and ..
> > Under Unix ... has no reserved meaning, and AFAIK neither under NT.
> 
> Under win32, paths consisting of only dots, with the exception of .
> and .., are illegal.  This is along with a number of other
> illegal characters and combinations, including such winners as
> mkdir -p "abcde/xyz/con/ffo/bar" hanging as it tries to do I/O to the
> "con" device; lots of fun when you untar a 500Meg tar tape from
> some other system that was designed on less ad hoc principles.
> 
> --
> <J Q B>
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