Re: [Plib-devel] Mac Updates/Patches (Tux too!)

[Norman V. <nh...@ca...>]

FYI --- Generalized Mac Path conversions are not really as kissable
as they might at first appear :-(

Following sniped from dis...@py...

>> > Unfortunately, it seems like sometimes the trailing ":" is required.
To
>> > explain why, I need to explain a little bit more about mac pathnames.
On
>> > the mac, a path starting with a colon is relative, while one which
doesn't
>> > start with a colon is absolute (ie. the reverse of the posix
convention),
>> > _unless_ it's just a single name (ie. no colons whatsoever) in which
case
>> > it's relative.  The end result of this is that "Macintosh HD" refers to
a
>> > file in the local directory called "Macintosh HD" (as does ":Macintosh
>> > HD"), while "Macintosh HD:" refers to the root directory of the hard
disk
>> > "Macintosh HD".
>> >
>> > However, "Macintosh HD:Applications:" and "Macintosh HD:Applications"
are
>> > the same thing as each other. Similarly ":Macintosh HD:Applications:"
and
>> > ":Macintosh HD:Applications" are the same as each other.
>>
>> Ooh, tricky!  Now I can see why Mac OS doesn't have a command-line
>> interface: if users can't understand the difference between "/foo" and
>> "foo", how on earth will they understand that "foo" == ":foo" != "foo:",
>> while "foo:bar" == ":foo:bar" (but "foo:bar" == "foo:bar:" and
>> ":foo:bar" == ":foo:bar:").  Aieee!  Doesn't quite rival VMS for
>> complexity, but it's getting there.
>
>Actually it's
>
>":foo" == "foo" != "foo:"
>
>but
>
>":foo:bar" != "foo:bar" == "foo:bar:"
>
>> > There's a similar problem with ":", "::", etc.  Removing a trailing ":"
in
>> > these cases directly affects the meaning.
>> [...]

Norman