Subject: Re: $ sign in path not recognized

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 02:54:48 EDT

Hello Bruno, thanks for replying to my message,

>>  I am using the DOS version of CLISP. When I try to load a file which is
>>  in a subdirectory whose name contains the $ sign, it returns a syntax error
>>  (load "c:\\dir$\\myfile")  --> SYNTAX ERROR
>>
>>  Is this normal?

>Yes, clisp assumes that DOS filenames contain only alphanumeric characters,
>dashes and underscores. That may be a little over-restrictive, but it helps
>discovering typos.
>> I see that for other systems the $ sign is used to indicate th
>> root directory, but for DOS it's a perfectly valid character in a path.

>On other systems $ introduces an environment variable, just like % on DOS.
>What would you expect clisp to do if you try to create a file whose name
>is "%PATH%" ? Expand the environment variable or not?

No, I think that's beyond the scope of CLISP to get into OS functions. However,
 I think it would be a good idea to allow in a pathname all characters which a
given OS allows as normal names. So, for the DOS version, it should allow the $
 sign but not the %. For Linux and others, the $ sign should not be accepted.
I think it's not that difficult to implement it and it's worth doing it.
The problem is that, with the situation as it is now, some directories remain u
nreachable for CLISP, unless you modify your directory names, which is not alwa
ys possible.
Merci et a bien tot,
Leo