On Thursday 07 March 2002 08:40 am, Lex Spoon wrote:

> Well, yes, that's true.  I happen to think this is normal and correct,
> but I doubt we'll agree.  I never have reason to process a windows or a
> MacOS or a RiscOS filename, and it's hard for me to imagine cases where
> I'd want to.  Filenames are implicitly a local thing, IMHO.

Unless they're not local.

Any time you get filenames from an external source, you run into having to 
convert them. A case in point is the storage of filenames in Zip archives. 
They're all normalized to look like Unix filenames (forward slashes as 
separators). So you could treat them as Unix filenames and convert to local 
flavors as needed.

Every time you do this, you can lose information, of course. An example is 
when you have a Mac file whose name contains a '/' and you want to translate 
it for Unix or Win32. Or a Unix file named 'c:\xyz' and you want to translate 
for Mac or Win32.

The same issues come up with CVS, with tape backup, with building web sites, 
etc.

-- 
Ned Konz
currently: Stanwood, WA
email:     ned at bike-nomad.com
homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com