Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!aero!trwrb!ucla-an!stb!michael
From: michael@stb.UUCP (Michael)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Enviroment (was Re: Yea, but can an Amiga Shell do this....)
Message-ID: <10580@stb.UUCP>
Date: 2 Sep 88 05:16:44 GMT
References: <8808232121.AA28517@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: michael@stb.UUCP (Michael)
Organization: STB BBS, La, Ca, Usa, +1 213 459 7231
Lines: 32

In article <8808232121.AA28517@cory.Berkeley.EDU> dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
>:One example is the file name system.  Using ":" too indicate root is
>:in no way superior to "/".  Using "//" to indicate previous directory
>:is in no way superior to "../".  Yet these differences make
>
>	Just a single slash '/' indicates the parent directory, and although
>I agree with you that this is not compatible with UNIX, I LIKE it *much*
>better than having to type '../'.

Wrong. A single slash does NOT indicate the parent directory. This is the
Amiga's file system problem--the symbols are context sensitive.

The truth:
A colon followed by a slash may be an error (is it assigned to a subdir?)
N+1 non-initial consecutive slashes refers to N parents
N initial slashes refers to N parents
There is no easy way to take the name of a directory and append a file
	name to it.

Tell you what: You give me a routine that will take two names, one a
directory, one a file, and return me a pathname for the file. Handle
ending slashes, null directories, assigned devices, assigned directories,
files beginning with slashes, etc. AND make it usable in CLI scripts.
Then, I will consider the Amiga's file system naming useably clean.

(under non-v7 unix, this routine is arg1 + "/" + arg2. V7 allowed "" for
current directory, so it would be (*arg1 == 0? "./" : arg1 + "/") + arg2
(+ == strcat))
: --- 
: Michael Gersten			 uunet.uu.net!denwa!stb!michael
:				sdcsvax!crash!gryphon!denwa!stb!michael
: Coff Coff <=== Stop smoking.