Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 12:12:02 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender: eliz AT is
To: "Mark E." <snowball3 AT usa DOT net>
cc: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: new Bash 2.02.1 test version available
In-Reply-To: <199902112015.UAA35208@out2.ibm.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.990214121116.11498B-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com


On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Mark E. wrote:

> Consider the PATH_EXPAND variable. Is there a time when a path 
> shouldn't be expanded?

Unfortunately, there are cases where expanding //d/foo/bar is not the
right thing.  The most common case is a Sed script (Sed scripts
usually like slashes ;-).  I think Bash even has some code to
specifically test for Sed, for this very reason, and avoid expanding
what seems to be a file name.

More generally, Bash cannot possibly know whether a string such as
//d/foo/bar is a file name or just a string.

However, with the new /dev/d/ feature of DJGPP v2.02, I expect it to
work much better than //d/foo, since the former is supported by all
DJGPP programs linked against v2.02 libraries.  So it might be a good
idea to invent some way of getting Bash to convert PATH into the
/dev/d/ form, and have its internal commands, like `pwd' return
pathnames in that form as well.  (Of course, you will have to rebuild
File-, Text-, Sh- etc. utils with v2.02, before you can actually use
that.)