Mixing / and \ path separators

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Anton Ertl wrote:

> Cygwin 1.3.18(0.69/3/2) handles filenames like
>
> /usr/local/share/gforth/0.5.9-20030201\kernl32l.fi
>
> all right, where the "\" is meant as a path separator.  Cygwin
> 1.3.19(0.71/3/2) and 1.3.20 reportedly do not like such names (file
> not found).  Is this intentional and will it stay that way?

This is intentional.  See <http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-announce/2003-01/msg00021.html>,
especially the line that says:
- Make handling of \foo\bar equivalent to /foo\bar.  (Christopher Faylor)
(the above should be the other way around, but you get the idea).

> If so, how should I deal with path names where parts of the path come
> from ordinary windows users?

Translate them to Unix paths using, for example, "sed 's!\\!/!g'.

> Background: We use Cygwin for the Windows port of Gforth
> (http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/).  The Windows port
> currently produces mixes like the above by default, and we could
> change that; but I am worried about paths coming from the users (e.g.,
> through the GFORTHPATH environment variable), which may use either
> way.
> - anton

Does the windows port of Gforth know about POSIX paths?  If so,
backslashes are not allowed in POSIX paths, and should be changed.  You
could then require that user variables provide paths in POSIX format
(i.e., with forward slashes).  If you want to be able to handle
backslashes in user-specified paths, you'll have to do the translation
internally.
	Igor
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  -- /usr/games/fortune


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