Date:	Wed, 1 Dec 93 14:57:26 JST
From:	Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To:	peprbv AT cfa0 DOT harvard DOT edu
Cc:	hmuelner AT fiicmds03 DOT tu-graz DOT ac DOT at, djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject:	Symbolic links and functionality [ was: O_BINARY ]

This is a problem with a number of GNU ports, eg, GZIP and Eric
Backus's ports.  You find that there are a number of files with
different names and identical content.

The solution in the X world is the `-name <any-name>' argument.
(Example: This allows xclock to look for resources under XClock, the
generic name, and also under a name like seattle.  So when I run
"xclock", the time offset is automatically set to +9 for Japan, but
when I run "xclock -name seattle", I can find out what time it is at
my friend's home with the offset set to -8.)  I would guess that
adding this functionality to GO32 would break something (probably
X-windows ports!), it always does (cf. the O_BINARY thread).

However, maybe we could make a standard DJGPP port convention that
these programs would accept the `-name' argument.  If you have 4DOS
(does DOS 6 have aliases now?) you can do the following:

alias gzip `gnuzip -name gzip %1`
alias gunzip `gnuzip -name gunzip %1`

(you may need to fiddle with the syntax to prevent recursive
evaluation of the aliases, I forget exactly).  This would give almost
the same functionality as symbolic links.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                           Stephen Turnbull                            |
|     University of Tsukuba, Institute of Socio-Economic Planning       |
|          Tennodai 1-chome 1--1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305 JAPAN            |
|        Phone:  +81 (298) 53-5091     Fax:  +81 (298) 55-3849          |
|               Email:  turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp                 |
|                                                                       |
|                Founder and CEO, Skinny Boy Associates                 |
|               Mechanism Design and Social Engineering                 |
| REAL solutions to REAL problems of REAL people in REAL time!  REALLY. |
|                      Phone:  +81 (298) 56-2703                        |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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