Date: Wed, 1 Dec 93 14:57:26 JST From: Stephen Turnbull To: peprbv AT cfa0 DOT harvard DOT edu Cc: hmuelner AT fiicmds03 DOT tu-graz DOT ac DOT at, djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu Subject: Symbolic links and functionality [ was: O_BINARY ] This is a problem with a number of GNU ports, eg, GZIP and Eric Backus's ports. You find that there are a number of files with different names and identical content. The solution in the X world is the `-name ' argument. (Example: This allows xclock to look for resources under XClock, the generic name, and also under a name like seattle. So when I run "xclock", the time offset is automatically set to +9 for Japan, but when I run "xclock -name seattle", I can find out what time it is at my friend's home with the offset set to -8.) I would guess that adding this functionality to GO32 would break something (probably X-windows ports!), it always does (cf. the O_BINARY thread). However, maybe we could make a standard DJGPP port convention that these programs would accept the `-name' argument. If you have 4DOS (does DOS 6 have aliases now?) you can do the following: alias gzip `gnuzip -name gzip %1` alias gunzip `gnuzip -name gunzip %1` (you may need to fiddle with the syntax to prevent recursive evaluation of the aliases, I forget exactly). This would give almost the same functionality as symbolic links. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Stephen Turnbull | | University of Tsukuba, Institute of Socio-Economic Planning | | Tennodai 1-chome 1--1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305 JAPAN | | Phone: +81 (298) 53-5091 Fax: +81 (298) 55-3849 | | Email: turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp | | | | Founder and CEO, Skinny Boy Associates | | Mechanism Design and Social Engineering | | REAL solutions to REAL problems of REAL people in REAL time! REALLY. | | Phone: +81 (298) 56-2703 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+