On 26.06.2011 13:50, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
Mark Morgan Lloyd schrieb:

Does Windows still support commands like "subst" and "join"?

A friend uses SUBST e.g. for his own libraries, and he cannot use
FPC/Lazarus because these are unable to find his files in e.g. X:\.


Why can't he use that? SUBST uses the same mechanism that is used for e.g. C:\ so all folders that are mapped using SUBST (or its underlying API) are accessible the same way from the Windows API as "normal" drives are.

Alternatively I believe that it does now have an equivalent of
symlinks for directories.

NT is POSIX compatible, at least with regards to files and inodes.
Symlinks exist since the introduction of desktop shortcuts/icons and the
Windows Explorer, in all file systems. The implementation (of symlinks
and SUBST) may vary, though, depending on the concrete filesystem.

But shortcuts aren't the same as symlinks. Shortcuts are normal files and they can be opened like that using e.g. OpenFile while you need to use special APIs to work on symlinks.

If you want something that is more like POSIX' symlink concept then you either need to look at the newer features provided by NTFS file systems and Windows versions like Vista and younger or you need to look at NT's object manager which can be accessed using the Native NT API and provides a virtual, object based root filesystem similar to that you can find on POSIX systems. You can also have symlinks there and in the end the drives you can see through the Window API (C:\, etc) are symlinks from the global WinAPI namespace (e.g. \Global??\C [yes, the "??" belong there]) to the correct partition (e.g. \Devices\Harddisk1\HarddiskVolume0).

Regards,
Sven

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