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
X-Authentication-Warning: slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 13:44:24 -0500 (EST)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: linda w <cygwin AT tlinx DOT org>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Bug: Perl:IsWinNT undefined & RFE, only use "/" in reg values, not names..?]
In-Reply-To: <402BC0EE.9070203@tlinx.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.56.0402121322370.17555@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <402BC0EE DOT 9070203 AT tlinx DOT org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.39

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, linda w wrote:

> [snip]
> Speaking of compatibility -- there is only 1 application I know of that
> uses "/" in keynames -- Cygwin.  Since it's already been noted that this
> makes it very awkward to access these keys in /proc, perhaps cygwin
> could op for better windows compatibility and go with the unofficial
> custom of not using "/" in keynames?  Many or most examples I've seen of
> manipulating the registry show the use of some "change separator"
> facility and then use "/" as the example separator in code examples --
> as "/" is already the separator in other parts of the OS and "\" is a
> pain to use since most modern languages use it for literalizing the next
> character
>
> What do you think?  Are these fixable/changable?
>
> Thanks,
> -linda

<PEDANTIC>
Technically, Cygwin doesn't use "/" in keynames -- it uses it in value
names.
</PEDANTIC>

I believe that backward compatibility will preclude any attempts to change
the mount key names...  Especially with the plans to move the mount
information out of the registry altogether, the extra effort to change the
key names now is probably not justified.

I don't see that as much of a problem, though.  Most command-line registry
manipulating tools (including Cygwin's regtool) provide a way to change
the key/value separator.  API calls don't care one way or another, as they
walk through keys as explicit strings, and rarely do parsing.

The only mechanism I can think of that is adversely affected by this
convention is /proc/registry, because of its attempt to map the registry
onto a filesystem.  Because the registry doesn't have the same set of
invalid characters in names as the underlying filesystem, this mapping
sometimes fails, as in the case of mounts values.  It might be possible to
change the /proc/registry implementation to translate "/"s in key and
value names to valid character combinations (e.g., URL encoding).  PTC.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
to the bathroom is a major career booster."  -- Patrick Naughton

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/