Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!oberon!aero!trwind!msd
From: msd@trwind.UUCP (Marc S. Dye )
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: syntax of remote pathnames?
Keywords: filespeak
Message-ID: <465@trwind.UUCP>
Date: 22 Mar 89 19:43:47 GMT
References: <8903161632.AA16971@corwin.CCS.Northeastern.EDU>
Reply-To: msd@TRW.COM (Marc S. Dye (ayuda))
Organization: ayuda Company
Lines: 56

In article <8903161632.AA16971@corwin.CCS.Northeastern.EDU> mckee@CORWIN.CCS.NORTHEASTERN.EDU (George McKee) writes:
> ...
>when it would make the writing flow much more smoothly if you
>could say things like "you can find a program that might do what
>you want in @SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU:info-mac/app/contour81.hqx".

It would be *WONDERFUL* to have a canonical format for file pathnames.
I suggest you don't imbed naked colons ':' anytime soon though.  VMS
and probably TOPS-20 will get sick.  Also note that Unix allows ':',
'@', or almost anything except '/' in a pathname.

Maybe some quoting is in order?  For example:

	@SRI-NIC.ARPA:`PS:<RFC>RFC1087.TXT'

is almost(?) as readable, and possible interpretable by a non-human
(just need to strip matching `', while feeling free to interpret the
naked ':' and '@' as syntactic operators).  Note that one obvious
alternative (escaping) gets *ugly* in a hurry:

	@SRI-NIC.ARPA:PS\:\<RFC\>RFC1087\.TXT

If you wanted to go further, you could talk about other 'operators' in
Unified File Speak.  Seriously, you could presumably adopt any regular
expression syntax for 'wildcarding', extended with a useful alternation,
and add in some sensible directory recursion, distinguishable from normal
(non-recursive) wildcarding.

The BSD Unix csh-style pathname syntax is fairly nice, but doesn't do
recursive directory descent.  VMS has some of these notions, but I'm
not personally wild about the [] pairs.  I.e. I like:

	/foo/.../bar

better than:

	[foo....]bar.

User names (or in more global sense, named access restriction classes)
would also be nifty:

	ANONYMOUS@SRI-NIC.ARPA:`PS:<RFC>RFC106'[5-7]`.TXT.0'

Note that the non-quoted parts behave according to canon; quoted stuff
can be as grotesque as any vendor likes.

Just suggestions ...

For fun, how about:

	@woof.Poundmasters.Com:`D:\HOSED'/.../{SHARE,SHAREALIKE}`.EXE'
	KO@VirulentlyMalignantSoftware.Com:`DQB666:[MANUALS]InThere.SOMEWHERE;0'

Enough fun -- back to the salt!

++msd