On 14-09-2014, at 8:44 AM, Ben Coman <btc at openInWorld.com> wrote:

> Eliot Miranda wrote:
>> 
>> But I'm OK with being told "#on: should only take a relative path,
>> indicating a subdirectory of FileDirectory default; it's not a bug".
>> 
>> Bah, I'd fix it.  I fixed it for unix.  It's only a little bit of checking to see if the path starts with letter colon.
> 
> I didn't see all of this thread, but I presume you are distinguishing between relative and absolute pathnames.  As well as the initial letter-colon, an absolute pathname also requires position 3 to contain a slash. 
> See the "Paths" section only of... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247.aspx#fully_qualified_vs._relative_paths  
> cheers -ben

And other OSs have even more interesting rules. Properly delegating to the platform class can handle it, assuming of course that the code does its job.

If I thought we could get away with it in practical terms I’d urge simply disallowing the non-relative path string thing. Not to mention making usage like 
FileDirectory default on: 'C:/Users/frsheara/squeak-ci/target/cogspur.r3072/cogspurwin/‘ 
a serious offense because of the included improper characters.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Talks to plants on their own level.