Sender: bill AT taniwha DOT tssc DOT co DOT nz
Message-ID: <35066727.5E8BB4B5@taniwha.tssc.co.nz>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 23:27:51 +1300
From: Bill Currie <bill AT taniwha DOT tssc DOT co DOT nz>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Vik Heyndrickx <Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be>
CC: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com,
        Charles Sandmann <sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu>
Subject: Re: Temporary files considered unsafe
References: <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 980310130222 DOT 4314B-100000 AT is> <350655E0 DOT A0EFE270 AT taniwha DOT tssc DOT co DOT nz> <350659E5 DOT 1930 AT rug DOT ac DOT be> <35066048 DOT AB7DCC1A AT taniwha DOT tssc DOT co DOT nz> <35066496 DOT 18FD AT rug DOT ac DOT be>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Precedence: bulk

Vik Heyndrickx wrote:
> DOS prg's DO run in Win3.1 not running in enhanced mode, don't they?

Yes, but very differently (eg no dpmi, very bad video support...).

> You can assume the existance of 39 (26 + 10 + 3) unique fn characters. I
> know there are MORE, in fact many more, but I refuse to use any
> character that might yield some problems even if those chances are
> remote. The tempnam functions and family should be extremily reliable.

I agree very much with the requirement for reliability. It is possible
to hook dos' toupper interrupt (int 2f something) but that feels too
dirty and might not work under windows anyway.

> i.e. I won't use '[', nor '-', nor some others, nor any character with
> an ASCII value exceeding 127.

Fair-nuff.

> Some members of the 'temporary file name creation family' require you to
> return a filename in a particular directory.

Arrg!
-- 
Leave others their otherness.