Date: Fri, 25 Jun 93 08:28:32 MDT
From: cwolff AT slowboy DOT intellistor DOT com (Clint Wolff)
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: several questiond from new user


> > > 1. If you call getcwd(buf,255) you will get the current working
> > >    directory but without the DOS drive. Is this a bug, an
> > >    intentional feature or a temporary abberation which will be
> > >    fixed. I would like to know before I make lots of changes to my
> > >    existing code to accomodate this inconsistancy between djgpp
> > >    and the other DOS compilers.
> > 
> > How many unix programs will break when you change this?  It sounds
> > like an easy change.
> 
> I think the number of UNIX programs that would break is small, but
> non-zero.
> 
> The biggest danger I see is the following:
> 
> 	1. code calls getcwd and puts it in string "dir".
> 	2. code wants to remove any possible trailing slashes from "dir"
> 	   a. but the code knows that a single lone "/" is the root
> 	      directory, a special case where the trailing "/" should
> 	      not be removed.
> 	   b. So the code sees dir == "a:/", decides that this is not
> 	      the root directory, and removes the "/" leaving "a:".
> 	3. Now the code uses the "dir", which points to "a:" rather
> 	   than "a:/", and gets things wrong because "a:" by
> 	   convention means the current directory on device a, not
> 	   necessarily the root directory.
> 

I would think the best way to handle this would be to "unix-ize" the dos
pathname by modifying the open routines to handle filenames that specify
the drive in a unix compatible, but DOS recognizable fashion...

One possible solution would be:

	/<drive>//path

ie c:\src\djgpp would be /c//src/djgpp
but \c\src\djgpp would be /c/src/djgpp

This method shouldn't break any utilities unless they parse the full pathname
to remove duplicate /'s...