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

[Darrell W. <dwa...@pu...>]

For relative paths, I am pretty sure folders end in ':' and files do not.

For PLIB, I think we will make all our paths relative. Therefore *all* paths
will have ':' at the beginning. Since we are not opening directories,
I don't think we have to worry about trailing ':'

so UNIX ->  "foo.bar" -> MAC ":foo.bar"

or "../foo.bar" -> "::foo.bar"

UNIX -> /usr/local/share -> MAC ":usr:local:share"

Hopefully that last one doesn't come up too often ;-) We just have to remind
developers to always use relative pathnames (even on UNIX/WINDOWS) and we
should have no problems.

This reminds me, when needing full paths, like for home directory or
whatnot, I think the usual is to call  getenv ("HOME"). But MacOS has no
concept of $HOME. In fact, the CodeWarrior C Library function getenv() on
MacOS always returns NULL.

I think we should add getHome to our file class.
The MacOS version can return the path to the preferences folder (global
place where 99% of Mac apps store settings, hence why mine has 500 some-odd
files in it ;-) ).


> From: "Norman Vine" <nh...@ca...>
> Reply-To: pli...@li...
> Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 23:58:00 -0400
> To: <pli...@li...>
> Subject: Re: [Plib-devel] Mac Updates/Patches (Tux too!)
> 
> 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
> 
> 
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