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From: acli@byron.net4.io.org (Ambrose Li)
Subject: Re: Language "ranking" based on posts to users groups
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <DKCxt9.9yJ@byron.net4.io.org>
Organization: private site, Scarborough, Canada
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 16:58:20 GMT
References: <4at4t0$j5j@garden.csc.calpoly.edu> <4bg95m$3ck@insanity.foxnet.net> <DK43vn.Jso@byron.net4.io.org> <4bqcmf$lpg@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
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In article <4bqcmf$lpg@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
Pixelated! <pixel@gnu.ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <DK43vn.Jso@byron.net4.io.org>,
>Ambrose Li <acli@byron.net4.io.org> wrote:
>>I see a program that rejects / I will conclude that that
>>program is broken beyond repair.
>
>Like all of the programs that come with DOS after version 3.3 or 4, at
>which time the switchar use was apparently abandoned in favor of
>hard-coding '/'.  [...]

The functionality of the setswitchar() system call disappeared in
DOS 4.0; the system call still exists, but it does nothing.
Up till DOS 3.3, setswitchar() does what it is supposed to do.

What I had in mind in my original posting has nothing to do with
setswitchar() though. What I meant was more like: whenever I see
stupid compiler manuals saying that you *must* write

  #include <sys\\stat.h>
               ^^
(say) in your DOS C programs, or when I see my path truncated or
rejected when I input a path with slashes, I want to hit those
software authors in their heads.

>Incidentally, '/' *is* a valid path separator in the Windows 3.1 common
>file dialogs, [...]

Unfortunately, many programs apparently do extra postprocesing so
that / will *not* be accepted as a valid path separator.

-- 
Ambrose C. Li ~{@h>tHY~}       ~  byron is my Linux box; io.org is my
                               ~ `Internet service bureau', not where
<@io.org:acli@byron.net4>      ~  I work. MS Windows will not become
<ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca>  ~  the OS standard; Linux will be there.
