Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!umn-d-ub!umn-cs!randy
From: randy@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Randy Orrison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Portable Pathname Parsing (was: Is NULL == 0 always true?)
Keywords: NULL
Message-ID: <3474@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 88 14:18:53 GMT
References: <134@soleil.UUCP> <7013@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: randy@umn-cs.UUCP (Randy Orrison)
Organization: I none noticed that
Lines: 30
Posted: Sun Jan 10 08:18:53 1988

In article <7013@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
|
|>        if (ptr = strchr (str,'\')) {
|
|This is, has been, and will continue to be a correct way to test
|for a null pointer.  However, '\' is nonportable.

A couple things:
	-- '\' is not nonportable, it's illegal (no?) since it's an escaped
	   single quote, preceeded by a single quote, but not followed by one
	   (should be "strchr (str,'\\')" or "strchr (str,'\'')" whichever
	   he meant.
	-- Assuming that what was really meant was '/' for parsing Unix
	   pathnames, this would be called nonportable, and there's the reason
	   for this message.

Since ANSI C is intended to maximize portablility of programs, and since
programs that deal with files in anything but the current directory must
specify pathnames (if such are available), does dpANS include any provision
for portable handling of paths?  I'm thinking of standardized library routines
that would build paths for you, in whatever the native syntax is.  Has this
been considered?  Or, is this too much an operating system thing and not a
C language thing?

	-randy
-- 
Randy Orrison, University of Minnesota School of Mathematics  |
UUCP:	{ihnp4, seismo!rutgers, sun}!umn-cs!randy	      |  (hello?)
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