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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How to detect OS type and version?
Date: 16 Oct 2005 11:55:05 -0400
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Date: 2005-10-16T11:55:05-04:00
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Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

> In article <ufyr2dqf1.fsf@STRIPCAPStelus.net>, Ray Blaak <rAYblaaK@STRIPCAPStelus.net> writes:
> > Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> writes:
> >> Ray Blaak <rAYblaaK@STRIPCAPStelus.net> writes:
> >> > Simply adding a new OS to some central definition should not impact all
> >> > existing code. In practical terms people should have had an "unknown OS"
> >> > handler anyway.
> >> 
> >> What is the directory separator character on "unknown OS"?  ;-)
> > 
> > I don't know, of course. The point is to have a plan for it. In the worst
> > case you exit with the appropriate error message "unknown OS!". In practice
> > you assume "Unix".
> 
> I got to work on some Ada code that used this "directory separator"
> approach.  Perhaps it is ok if your only choices are Windows or Unix,
> but on VMS the characters ":[", "." and "]" are all used, except when
> that list is ":<", "." and ">".  Needless to say, the "directory separator"
> approach was totally inadequate.

Yes, I agree.  What you want is a set of operations for pulling apart
pathnames and putting them together in various ways.  Even that won't
work on some systems, but I suspect it's good enough in practise.

Ada 2005 has something along those lines, but I haven't looked at
it carefully.

So perhaps I should have said, "What is the algorithm for parsing file
names on `unknown OS'?"  ;-)

- Bob