Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:07:10 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Funny thing with _fixpath
In-Reply-To: <34F52BB4.5C69@rug.ac.be>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980226130531.6246B-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
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On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Vik Heyndrickx wrote:

> What canonicalizing actually means is that it yields a unique filename
> for some file. That is its primary functioning; not converting slashes,
> stripping dots, simplifying double-dots, making absolute, adding drive
> letters, un-SUBST-ing, un-ASSIGN-ing, capitalizing, adding "x:/DEV/" for
> devices and other weird things.

This is a semantic argument, so I won't enter it.  Since the function's 
name is not `canonicalize' or anywhere near that, it doesn't have to 
comply to any standard that's acceptable to all.

> A canonicalizing function should be complete enough to help decide
> whether two filenames refer to the same file.

This is actually impossible on MS platforms.  But it doesn't seem to be 
relevant to this discussion, either.