Re: string function: definition of a function

[Tait <gnu...@t4...>]

> > Further I have noticed `pwd` command from shell is needed to set a variable
> > for the current working directory because
> >	gnuplot> pwd
> > just prints it to screen, but I cannot do
> >	a=pwd
> > or	a=eval pwd
>
> The "pwd" command from the shell is needed in any case. It is only a matter
> of whether it is called directly or called via the internal routine pwd_command().
> I would do
>	a = system("pwd")

gnuplot> a=system("pwd")
		 warning: system evaluation not supported by MS-Windows 32 bit
gnuplot> pwd
C:\Program Files\gnuplot\bin
gnuplot>

So there is a need for something portable, and it's not system("pwd").

> I don't know.  I don't think that the concept of "current working directory"
> is universally portable even apart from how you would issue the command.
> In VMS, for example, the current directory name and the current disk are
> separate things. Just asking for the current directory would not tell you
> what disk you would be writing to.

In Windows, the drive is given as part of pwd, so it would make sense,
I think, to emulate the same behavior in VMS and return the full path,
diskname$foo:[path.to.dir]. 

Tait