Re: Concatenating of directory strings
Darryl Okahata wrote:
[snip]
[ Pet peeve alert: I understand that we're stuck with this
"/" vs "\"
bogosity in XEmacs, but this was a very, very bad decision. XEmacs
should have been made to always use "/". Yes, this would be
different, but it would not have broken lots of code (e.g., efs, w3,
etc.). ]
This was, if I recall correctly, Kirill's and my decision and I still
think that it's the right one for two reasons:
- Users expect to see the separator that they expect to see. How would
you feel if XEmacs on UNIX used '\' everywhere just because that's what
XEmacs on win32 uses?
- The base win32 API does accept '/' as a separator, but most
command-line programs, including the shell, don't. Other parts of the
win32 API such as the "File Open" dialogs also don't.
The required lisp-level code changes to support OS-dependant separators
are not extensive; w3 didn't need changing at all in the end, and if I
recall correctly the required changes to efs amount to changing four
lines, three of which are currently doing the wrong thing on UNIX
systems anyway.
There exist more widespread changes that are required to make XEmacs
work well on win32, which are unrelated to the separator issue. For
instance the requirement that authors use (temp-directory) instead of
"/tmp".
Jonathan.
--
Jonathan Harris | jhar(a)tardis.ed.ac.uk
London, England | Jonathan.Harris(a)symbian.com