Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon
From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: New Assigns.  CLI Paths and such.
Message-ID: <8803032154.AA08656@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 3 Mar 88 21:54:45 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 32

>The command path is meant to provide multiple lock style
>capability.

	The major problem with the command path is that it doesn't
allow you to make generic specifications.  For instance, if you are
on a one-drive system, and you want to switch from your workbench disk
to a working disk (which happens to have many workbench and other commands
in the C directory), you MUST MANUALLY re-assign C: to the new disk. 

	What I want to see are SYMBOLIC paths.  And I want to be able
to specify that a path search NOT put up a requestor when a specified
volume is not mounted.  This is one of the major reasons I wrote the
shell.  But even the shell doesn't help when you RUN something or execute
something (like make) which executes other things.

	For instance, in DME1.29, the referencing command searches S: AND all
the floppies for df?:s/dme.refs , and does NOT put up a requestor if 
there is no floppy in the drive or if the floppy that was there has
been changed.  It means I can simply stick in the floppy which contains
the proper reference material and immediate execute the DME command without
having to reassign anything.

	Since a directory search for a specific file takes virtually no
time, having 10 or even 15 symbolic paths takes very little time to 
search (consider also that these paths usually get cached by the DOS
buffers), and some of those links do not have to be mounted.

	On an IBM PC, this is not the case.  Although the paths are
symbolic, the entire directory for each path must be searched even when
looking for a specific file, causing all sorts of disk activity.

					-Matt