Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!oliveb!stratus!gbs
From: gbs@stratus.UUCP (George B. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: pathnames
Message-ID: <1680@stratus.UUCP>
Date: 20 Feb 89 07:08:43 GMT
References: <2569@pegasus.ATT.COM> <3847@cbnews.ATT.COM> <662@mks.UUCP> <10353@ut-emx.UUCP> <1623@stratus.UUCP> <783@ethz.UUCP>
Reply-To: gbs@stratus.UUCP (George B. Smith)
Organization: Stratus Computer, Inc. Western Development Center
Lines: 36

In article <783@ethz.UUCP> zu@bernina.UUCP (Urs Zurbuchen) writes:
>In article <1623@stratus.UUCP> gbs@stratus.UUCP (George B. Smith) writes:
>>And it is very easy to do, as I said before.  All a program has to do
>>is find out the current setting of the switch char.
>Now, I don't agree with this one. Why not allow '/' and '\' as directory
>separators in pathnames. In most cases you even don't have to stick
>with '-' as the switch character but can allow '/' as that, too.

I would answer that I think it is ugly to have *both* backslashes *and*
forward slashes in the same path name.  I would say that at some level
this can be considered a personal, esthetic consideration and would be
very hard to agree on.  I just prefer C:/top/sub1/sub2/file over
C:\top/sub1\sub2/file.  Although, on a technical level, mixing the
separator characters would effectively disallow the use of the backslash
as an escape character which is a common convention.  I would hazard the
guess that people who would like to use the forward slash as the path
separator would like to use the backslash as the escape character.

>>... if the current switch char is '-', then
>>assume the path separator is the '/';  if the switch char is not the
>>'-', then I would say it is safe that you can assume the path separator
>>is the '\'.
>The safest way is to test for '/' as the switch character. If so, path
>separator has to be '\'. Otherwise it's '/'. No need to test for '-'.

I agree with Urs on this point.  I will change my code to do as
he suggests.  Thanks for the insight.

>		Have a nice day,
>		      ...urs

And to you.
George B. Smith
Stratus Computer, Inc
gbs@stratus.stratus.com
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