Re: LYNX-DEV /foo/.. ?

[Klaus Weide]

On Sat, 2 Nov 1996, Foteos Macrides wrote:

>       For DOS, you should do it "right", as I did for VMS, and
> use an overt URL_symbolic_path <-> local_file_system translation
> function.

What would be the costs of doing it "right" also for unix?
Is the weight of historical precedence too heavy to ever do it?

>            The similarity between URL symbolic path structure and
> the Unix file system resulted in Lynx being developed without such
> a coherent translation function for file://localhost/path URLs, and
> a kludge to make that and ftp work equivalently, all before I got
> involved with Lynx.  Sigh...

Another effect of not distinguishing clearly between file system paths
and URL paths is that Lynx gets confused (on unix) when it encounters
local files specified with double (or more) slashes somewhere in the
path.  (.e.g. /usr/local//bin).  Unix systems (at least where I have
checked this) treat this just like a single slash.  So /usr/local//..
is the same directory as /usr.  URL simplification rules differ..
(scheme://some.host/usr/local//.. gets "simplified" to
 scheme://some.host/usr/local [or maybe scheme://some.host/usr/local/]).

I don't know what happens with such paths on DOS, I think multiple
backslashes in arbitrary places are illegal there.

  Klaus   

;
; To UNSUBSCRIBE:  Send a mail message to address@hidden
;                  with "unsubscribe lynx-dev" (without the
;                  quotation marks) on a line by itself.
;