Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: access() Message-ID: <3281@ficc.uu.net> Date: 2 Mar 89 20:25:29 GMT References: <979@auspex.UUCP> <1040@auspex.UUCP> Distribution: comp Organization: Xenix Support Lines: 45 In article <1040@auspex.UUCP>, guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes: > >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. OK. Our new system V box is just... System V. The name on the front is Unisys, but it's really an Arix box. The CPU is a 68020. Our old boxes are Xenix 286 3.5, based on System III. They are running a network called "OpenNET" that uses the syntax: //node/path/file to access files on another node. OK. We're a freindly bunch. We let the System V box access the whole net. Or we try to. sysv% uucp xenix1!//xenix2/usr/fred/project/code.plm code.plm Sounds good. Except BNU decides that "//" is a typo, and changes it to "/". Then xenix1 sees "/xenix2/..." and can't find the file. I can't think of a good reason for it to perform this translation. Can you? > 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. Ah, but AT&T systems have no problem with "//" or "///" or "/////", so there should be no advantage to doing this. You want to know what my point is... it's simply this: if it's not broken, why did they decide to fix it? It causes problems in the feild. They should take the code out again. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. `-_-' Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.uu.net. 'U` People have opinions. Companies have policy. And typos are my own business.