Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!uunet!auspex!guy From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: access() Message-ID: <1040@auspex.UUCP> Date: 18 Feb 89 09:17:30 GMT References: <979@auspex.UUCP> <999@auspex.UUCP> <3112@ficc.uu.net> Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Distribution: comp Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara Lines: 29 >So someone should tell the people doing HDB uucp to stop converting: > //node/path/file >into: > /node/path/file >so we could access remote nodes on our net from our new System V box. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but I'm sure you realize that, unless you're running Domain/OS or something like it on "your new System V box", merely changing HDB not to do that won't have that effect. I shall therefore assume that you're trying to make some sort of point here. If you're trying to say "interpreting '//' specially is a stupid idea", I'll let the Apollo people respond to that one. If you're trying to say "programs shouldn't have to worry about whether '//' means something special or not", sorry, but POSIX seems to indicate that perhaps programs *should* worry about it. POSIX-conformant programs can't *depend* on '//' meaning something special, but they must be prepared for it to mean something special. The fact that HDB performs that transformation really says nothing other than that the people who wrote the code to do that thought it was OK to do so; since they were, I think, all running on systems with more-or-less AT&T-derived file system handling code (or code written to behave pretty much like said code), they probably either didn't think about systems where '//' means something special or didn't care about them.