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Reply-To: <ian DOT chesal AT utoronto DOT ca>
From: "Ian R. Chesal" <ian DOT chesal AT rogers DOT com>
To: <caelum AT debian DOT org>, <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: PROPOSAL: translate '::' to '.' in arguments to the man command
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 10:20:04 -0500
Message-ID: <001001c2c3bc$15248ca0$0302a8c0@calvin>
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X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH LOGIN at fep03-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com from [24.102.123.73] using ID <ian DOT chesal AT rogers DOT com> at Fri, 24 Jan 2003 10:19:57 -0500

Try perldoc instead of man for help with Perl modules. It reads the POD
embedded in the modules and does the :: to / or \ translation for you.

For example:

	perldoc File::Basename

Would give you the POD embedded in /lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Basename.pm.
It's also a good way to: a) make sure you're getting the documentation
relevant to the module, and not some artifact man page from an old
module installation; b) perl searches its PERL5LIB path and gives you
the documentation for the first instance of the module it finds so you
get the documentation for the module instance that perl would also use
at run time hence you can tell if you're loading an older/newer version
of the module than you were expecting.

Cheers!
Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com [mailto:cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com] On Behalf
Of Rafael Kitover
Sent: January 24, 2003 3:50 AM
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: PROPOSAL: translate '::' to '.' in arguments to the man command


I have noticed that some man pages, for example perl modules below the
root namespace, are installed as Foo.Bar instead of Foo::Bar because
apparently windows file names cannot contain "::". Eg.

$ touch 'Foo::Bar'  
touch: creating `Foo::Bar': Invalid argument

This is sufficiently different from UNIX to trip most people up,
especially those working with Perl. Further, filenames with one colon do
work, e.g. Touch 'Foo:Bar'.

For this reason I propose changing the "man" command in Cygwin to take
the special case of "::" into account and convert it to a ".", iff the
file containing "::" does not exist (might be supported in the future.)

If this is considered a good idea I'll be happy to make the patch.

Cheers,

-- 
Rafael

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