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Message-ID: <3ADEFE16.9F93F6EC@ece.gatech.edu>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 11:02:46 -0400
From: "Charles S. Wilson" <cwilson AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu>
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To: Corinna Vinschen <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Problems with illegal characters in Pathnames
References: <229D7C0FE0BED311A0E800805F0DD47176CB58 AT wn01ex DOT wn DOT gb DOT solvay DOT com> <002f01c0c8d4$fbc186c0$6e032bb7 AT BRAMSCHE> <20010419162914 DOT H12557 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de>
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Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 03:31:04PM +0200, Ralf Habacker wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm porting applications for Windows (using X11 and KDE) and one often
> > recognized problem is that application using
> > the content of the DISPLAY environment variable to generate filenames
> > directly. Under Windows character ':' and some other aren't allowed for
> > filenames, so this applications will fail on running.
> >
> > I've found a function "mount_info::conv_to_win32_path" in the cygwin
> > library. Is it possible, that this function can convert illegal filename
> > characters to valid ?
> 
> No, it doesn't. This is a long lasting discussion and currently
> there's no agreement due to several pros and cons.
> 
> If you really want that functionality, write your own wrapper
> functions which convert POSIX paths to POSIX paths minus invalid
> DOS chars.

IMO, your apps are broken, not cygwin.  A "portable" program should use
portable filenames.  Therefore, your X11 app should mangle the DISPLAY
environment variable itself to generate an acceptable filename -- on all
supported platforms.

--Chuck

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