12:51 a.m.
Is there a system independend way to concatenate directories in the
XEmacs (eg: (concat-dirs "/usr/local" "man/man1") =>
"/usr/local/man/man1")?
I'm asking, because I think, that without such a function code like
the following
(concat dir1 "/" dir2)
will break on systems like MSDOS or NT - or is there an automatic
conversion of pathes from "/usr/local/man/man1" to
"\usr\local\man\man1" on DOS systems?
1:47 a.m.
Heiko Muenkel wrote:
Is there a system independend way to concatenate directories in the
XEmacs (eg: (concat-dirs "/usr/local" "man/man1") =>
"/usr/local/man/man1")?
I'm asking, because I think, that without such a function code like
the following
(concat dir1 "/" dir2)
will break on systems like MSDOS or NT
I'm not aware of such a function. However
(concat (file-name-as-directory dir1) dir2)
will do the right thing.
- or is there an automatic
conversion of pathes from "/usr/local/man/man1" to
"\usr\local\man\man1" on DOS systems?
MS windows systems will accept '/'s in paths, but paths containing '/'
will look weird to the user. expand-file-name is the only function that
converts '/'s to '\'s.
Jonathan.
--
Jonathan Harris | jhar(a)tardis.ed.ac.uk
London, England | Jonathan.Harris(a)symbian.com
7:23 p.m.
Is there a system independend way to concatenate directories in the
XEmacs (eg: (concat-dirs "/usr/local" "man/man1") =>
"/usr/local/man/man1")?
According to Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr>, one should use:
(expand-file-name "man/man1" "/usr/local")
--
Darryl Okahata
darrylo(a)sr.hp.com
DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not
constitute the support, opinion, or policy of Hewlett-Packard, or of the
little green men that have been following him all day.
9:23 p.m.
>>>> "Darryl" == Darryl Okahata
<darrylo(a)sr.hp.com> writes:
> Is there a system independend way to concatenate directories in
> the XEmacs (eg: (concat-dirs "/usr/local" "man/man1") =>
> "/usr/local/man/man1")?
According to Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr>, one should
use:
(expand-file-name "man/man1" "/usr/local")
Puh. I`d never expected that this function does the job of converting
pathnames between systems. There should be at least a hint in it's
documentation.
The following example shows, which problems will propably hit the
XEmacs in the future, when MS-DOS pertubed people are going to write
elisp programs ...
(expand-file-name "man\man1" "\usr\local")
=> "/home/muenkel/data/docs/mail/Inbox/usrlocal/manman1"
11:29 p.m.
The following example shows, which problems will propably hit the
XEmacs in the future, when MS-DOS pertubed people are going to write
elisp programs ...
(expand-file-name "man\man1" "\usr\local")
=> "/home/muenkel/data/docs/mail/Inbox/usrlocal/manman1"
If you hard-code paths, then, yes, this can be a problem.
[ However, your example is slightly wrong. You should have used:
(expand-file-name "man\\man1" "\\usr\\local")
=> "c:\\usr\\local\\man\\man1"
Note that, if backslashes are used in elisp strings, you need to quote
the backslashes, just as if you're writing C code. Further note that
this is not a problem with the read-file-name stuff, as the quoting is
automatically done for you. ]
If you write paths using forward slashes, then there isn't a
problem. MSDOS is just as happy with forward slashes as it is with
backward slashes. We just need to tell elisp programmers to always use
forward slashes, if they must type a directory separator. It's not that
big a deal really, aside from programmer education.
[ 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.). ]
--
Darryl Okahata
darrylo(a)sr.hp.com
DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not
constitute the support, opinion, or policy of Hewlett-Packard, or of the
little green men that have been following him all day.
12:16 a.m.
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
9:16 a.m.
At 00:16 06/11/98 +0000, Jonathan Harris wrote:
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.
Do you still have the patch so that we can beat Michael over the head with
it...
andy
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mail: andyp(a)parallax.co.uk web: www.parallax.co.uk/~andyp
11:57 p.m.
Heiko Muenkel wrote:
>>>>> "Darryl" == Darryl Okahata <darrylo(a)sr.hp.com>
writes:
[snip]
> According to Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr>, one
should
> use:
> (expand-file-name "man/man1" "/usr/local")
Puh. I`d never expected that this function does the job of converting
pathnames between systems. There should be at least a hint in it's
documentation.
Well, the docs for expand-file-name do say:
Convert filename NAME to absolute, and canonicalize it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Maybe that should be made more explicit.
The following example shows, which problems will propably hit the
XEmacs in the future, when MS-DOS pertubed people are going to write
elisp programs ...
(expand-file-name "man\man1" "\usr\local")
=> "/home/muenkel/data/docs/mail/Inbox/usrlocal/manman1"
There are actually two bogus assumptions in your example; the one that
you were pointing out (ie that authors know what the user's directory
separator is) but also the assumption that system paths like /usr/local
exist on Win32.
Jonathan.
--
Jonathan Harris | jhar(a)tardis.ed.ac.uk
London, England | Jonathan.Harris(a)symbian.com
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7 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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Andy Piper -
Darryl Okahata -
Heiko Münkel -
Jonathan Harris