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From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Programmers - allow use of "/" in paths, please
Keywords: switchar
Message-ID: <12384@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 20 Oct 88 14:20:16 GMT
References: <824@kksys.UUCP> <2678@ihuxy.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Distribution: na
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 47

Several observations on switchar:

bird@kksys.UUCP (Mike Bird) writes:

#Another friend of mine used to work for a company (now defunct) who was a
#licensed MicroSoft OEM.  He still had the OEM book from MS.  In it, there is
#documented a MSDOS function x'37' subfunction 01.  I created a TP4.0 program
#to use this function, and it worked identically to the switchar program.
#Identically in every respect.  Same problems.  So, I conclude that the
#problems are in the products I'm using, and not in the programs which
#switch.  Here are some examples of the problems I'm having:

  Yes, and in DOS2.x there was a config.sys option called "switchar=*"
where * was anything you wanted to use. If * was not / you could use it
for path delimiters.

and then vg55611@ihuxy.ATT.COM (Gopal) writes:

#To all programmers:
#
#If you could write an extra couple of lines to substitute all "/" by 
#"\" in paths, that would help out the SWITCHAR issue a lot.

It's not needed. All you have to do is to avoid actually rejecting the
'/', since DOS accepts either as a path delimiter. This is documented in
the section on DOS call interrupts, page D-14 in the manual I have
handy, #6936752,

	"Note: All calls that accept path names will
	 accept a forward slash or a backslash as a path
	 separation character."

This is why C compiler (at least MSC) accept / in includes, because they
would have to take special trouble to not accept it.

Some programs have the / programmed in, and parse the command line
themselves. Others let command.com parse the command line and changing
the switchar works fine. No effort is needed to allow / in names, just
the care to not break something which works the way you would like by
default.

Hope this clarifies the problem as being in the programs and not (for a
change) in DOS.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me