Re: RFC 14 (v3) Modify open() to support FileObjects and

[Jon Ericson]

Joe McMahon wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Nathan Wiger wrote:
> > > Pick one:
> > >
> > > 1)  Filenames that end with a '/' are directories and those that don't
> > > are files.  (Both examples are files.)
> >
> > No, too restrictive. I don't like this and would hate having to remember
> > it.
> >
> Plus the non-"/" separated filename conventions (MacOS in
> particular) would not work well with this. "/" has no relationship to
> directory in MacOS. Colon, on the other hand, does.

Please look at the context of this discussion.  We were talking about
URL syntax.  Of course, the native filename syntax applies to non-URL
opens.  I don't have any experience with the MacOS filesystem, but the
Netscape File|Open Page menu item should be a good model.

> I think it's better not to assume anything about directory separator
> character. Perhaps a filespec pragma might be useful?
> 
>   use filespec MacOS;   # Perl now "knows" to use ":" as the
>                         # directory separator

Perl should already know how to do native opens (from the perl configure
process).  Non-native opens should be through URLs.

Jon
-- 
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