Subject: Re: fixpath patch (rev 3)
From: Tim Van Holder <tim DOT van DOT holder AT pandora DOT be>
To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
In-Reply-To: <1438-Mon01Oct2001134848+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il>
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	<1001931968 DOT 21287 DOT 12 DOT camel AT bender DOT falconsoft DOT be> 
	<1438-Mon01Oct2001134848+0300-eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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Date: 01 Oct 2001 14:39:30 +0200
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On Mon, 2001-10-01 at 13:48, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Tim Van Holder <tim DOT van DOT holder AT pandora DOT be>
> > Date: 01 Oct 2001 12:26:07 +0200
> > 
> > Note that I would prefer /dev/[bogus] or something similar, to avoid
> > any and all issues with colons (either as drive or path separator).
> 
> What issues are those?
> 
> If you are afraid of commands that fail, that's okay: we _want_ them
> to fail when this happens.  We just want them to fail in the least
> dangerous way.

I was thinking along the lines of a Unixy program building a Unixy path
list using /dev/:bogus:, which would lead to '/dev/' and 'bogus' being
used.

> As for "[bogus]", it is a valid file name, so, while extremely
> improbable, it could exist on a user's machine.
It's only valid under Windows though (not sure about Windows+LFN=n).

> I thought about other characters which are invalid in file names, but
> all of them seem to run a risk of unintended consequences.  For
> example, `*' and `?' could expand into something, `>' or `|' could
> cause creation of files or even change the semantics of the command,
> etc.  We could use control characters (below the blank), though.  If
> someone has ideas, please speak up.
But control chars are technically valid in filenames, aren't they?
Such files would be incredibly rare though.  Isn't there a control char
that displays as a frowny face?  That would seem appropriate.