Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!cbmvax!jesup From: jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Wild Cards, file syntax (was: arp CD command change???) Message-ID: <6079@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 24 Feb 89 22:05:09 GMT References: <8902131846.AA21527@postgres.Berkeley.EDU> <35960@bbn.COM> <5985@cbmvax.UUCP> <6051@cbmvax.UUCP> Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 33 In article shadow@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven Thomas Corzine) writes: >In article <6051@cbmvax.UUCP> jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes: > I often have to look and count ../'s to figure out how many > levels I've gone up (I often need multiple ../'s). Personal preference, > what you were raised on. > >True, it's mostly a matter of preference, but "." and ".." _seem_ more >consistent, somehow. Regardless, seeing as how it's a matter of >preference, and the is by no means a clear concensus, both styles >ought to be supported. People seem about evenly split between Unix >and AmigaDOS style conventions. Therefore, support both. No big >problem. (Have an environment variable or equivalent to define which >to use.) If it were just the shell, that could easily be done. The problem is that pathnames are dealt with directly by the handlers, which are not so easy to change, and if you did allow configuration, you'd end up with no end of problems where a program had pathnames one way and the system was configured the other. _If_ you can reliably tell which arguements/etc typed to a shell are pathnames, you could do translation. However, the programs would still report amigados-style pathnames, presenting lots of chances for confusion. This discussion is fairly useless. It is simply not practical to make major changes to the pathname syntax of an OS after it's been in the field, unless you're ready and willing to break everyone. (Sorry) Extensions to the syntax are possible at times, while breaking far fewer programs. So, how about suggesting ways to get the features you want, without breaking every program under the sun? A far more useful discussion, I think. -- Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup