From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: System Calls
Date: 1998/12/29
Date: 1998-12-29T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <wccg19y8zti.fsf@world.std.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 75tv4m$vmm$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com
dennison@telepath.com writes:
> The problem is in the little differences. Dos uses '\', where Unix and VMS
> use '/'. In Unix that '\' is quite liable to be used in the file name to
> escape special characters. In DOS, devices are at the front of the path with
> a ':'. In Unix devices are simply the first path or two in the filename. In
> Unix and VMS '::' can be used to indicate the machine owning the device in
> some circumstances. In Unix disks must be mounted before use. In DOS and
> Windows, they are generally automaticly detected.
The Symbolics Lisp machine had a pretty decent solution to these kinds
of problems. They invented an abstraction that included pretty-much a
superset of all the bells and whistles on the various systems. At least
part of the problem is pretty trivial -- I mean, "list of directory
names" is an abstraction that need not care about "/" vs "\". Not all
of it's easy, but the Lisp Machine solution seemed pretty well thought
out to me at the time.
- Bob
--
Change robert to bob to get my real email address. Sorry.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-12-29 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-12-16 0:00 System Calls mabrouk BELHOUT
1998-12-16 0:00 ` dennison
1998-12-17 0:00 ` Gilles Sarnikowski
1998-12-17 0:00 ` dennison
1998-12-18 0:00 ` mabrouk BELHOUT
1998-12-24 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner
1998-12-24 0:00 ` dennison
1998-12-24 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-12-25 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-12-29 0:00 ` Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen
1998-12-29 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1998-12-29 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-12-30 0:00 ` dennison
1998-12-29 0:00 ` Robert A Duff [this message]
1998-12-30 0:00 ` dennison
1999-01-02 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1998-12-25 0:00 ` dewar
1998-12-25 0:00 ` dewar
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1998-12-23 0:00 mabrouk BELHOUT
2001-07-10 18:20 Matt Raikes
2001-07-10 21:55 ` Dale Stanbrough
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