On 10/1/2009 8:04 AM, Hussein Shafie wrote:
> Andy Black wrote:
>
>> I recently noticed that the %P macro variable on Windows behaves
>> differently when the path is at the top (or root) directory than when
>> the path contains a directory. When it is at the root, it ends with a
>> backslash (e.g. "E:\") whereas when it contains a directory, it does not
>> end with a backslash (e.g. "E:\My Data"). ..
>
> ...The filename of a directory is *not* expected to end with '/' (or '\' on
> Windows). That's why this does not need to be documented,
>
> Note the filename of the root directory of a filesystem is always
> singular. This filename is '/' on Unix and something like c:\ on
> windows. That is, %P necessarily ends with '/' (or '\' on Windows) for
> the root directory of a filesystem.
>
Thanks, Hussein, for the good explanation.
I'm wondering if it would be possible for XXE to detect this internally
and remove the final slash for when the filename is at the root. The
reason is that then when one has a sequence like %{P}%{S}, one never
gets double slashes when %{P} happens to be at the root. I had to do
some fancy footwork in my commands to overcome this issue. It was a
problem for one command
<cfg:command name="run" parameter="[Windows] del
"%{P}%{S}XLingPaperPDFTemp%{S}%{R}.txt""/>
where it failed to run if the file was at the top directory. It gave a
message of "The network path was not found" presumably because it saw
the "\\" and interpreted it as network path.
Thanks for considering this request.
--Andy
