Windows vs. Linux

[andrew clarke]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 05:31:01PM +0200, Sybren Stuvel wrote:

James Stroud enlightened us with:

its better to use:

os.path.join('m y', 'favorite', 'dir')

than

"\\".join(['my', 'favorite', 'dir'])

because the latter will bonk on linux.

>
Ehm... replace that with "the latter with bonk on every OS except
Microsoft Windows". Windows is the weird one in OS-land, because they
are the only one that use the most widely used escape-character (the
backslash) as path separator.

OS/2 (and eComStation) also uses the backslash as the path separator.

[Duncan Booth]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

Bryan Olson wrote:

Duncan Booth wrote:

>I'm not sure ambiguity enters into it. I think perhaps the bad
>detection of the option happens because the CD command can ignore
>spaces in its argument. Since it is ignoring spaces they don't
>actually require a space after the option strings.

>
You lost me. Spaces are significant in file names, and slashes
within the path are used as path separators, as far as I can
tell.

Sorry I was unclear. It isn't that spaces are ignored, it is that they do
not count as delimiters in the CD command. In all other DOS commands they
count as argument delimiters unless they are inside quotes.

>Any other Microsoft commands I try all complain about 'invalid
>switch'.

>
The first I noticed were their build tools. Their version of
"make", called "nmake", and their visual studio tools will
accept either forward or backward slashes in paths.
>

Ok, pedantically I meant the commands that come as part of the system. Most
external tools such as Microsoft's compilers have always accepted forward
slashes interchangeably with backslashes. They also usually accept '-' as
an option character interchangeably with '/'. The 'standard' commands
though seem to go to a lot of effort to reject forward slashes in paths,
and the CD command seems to be the only one where this usage gets through
the net.

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

On 2006-08-04 05:30:00, Sybren Stuvel wrote:

>Besides, you probably don't know whether it's not one of your direct
>suppliers who's affected. You're sure you don't buy from anybody
>running a Windows system? I'd bet against that, and I only bet when
>I know I win :)

>
Good point. I don't buy much software, though. The only things I buy
are some games every now and then.

No food? No clothes? No furniture? No household supplies? No
transportation? No bike/bicycle/car? They all (well, most of them) use
computers in their administration; /that's/ the cost I was talking about,
not the cost for the software industry :)

Gerhard

[andrew clarke]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 02:01:58PM +0200, Sybren Stuvel wrote:

OS/2 (and eComStation) also uses the backslash as the path
separator.

>
You mean OS/2 is still in actual use?

'fraid so. :-)

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

On 2006-08-04 09:58:34, Sybren Stuvel wrote:

>They all (well, most of them) use computers in their administration;
>/that's/ the cost I was talking about, not the cost for the software
>industry :)

>
Good point. Time more people started using Open Source :)

Definitely. But don't hold your breath :)

Gerhard

[Jorgen Grahn]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 14:47:59 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler <gelists@gmail. comwrote:

On 2006-08-01 12:31:01, Sybren Stuvel wrote:

....

Is that really true? From what I know, it's more like this:
>
- Unix-type systems: '/'
- Windows-type systems: '\'
- Mac OS: ':'
- OpenVMS: '.'
- ...
>
Maybe someone else can fill in some of the missing OSes.

AmigaDOS: '/'. (On the other hand, it didn't understand '.' and '..' without
third-party patches, and it didn't have the '/' directory.).

It doesn't seem to
look like Windows is the odd man out; it rather seems that every type of OS
uses its own separator.

In the 1980s, MS-DOS /was/ an ugly bastard child; lots of other systems
existed that I have never heard about. As for what path separator they used
and why, I'm afraid you'd have to ask on alt.folklore.co mputers ...

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu
\X/ snipabacken.dyn dns.org R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Bryan Olson]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

Duncan Booth wrote:

Bryan Olson wrote:
>

>Duncan Booth wrote:

>>Any other Microsoft commands I try all complain about 'invalid
>>switch'.

>>
>The first I noticed were their build tools. Their version of
>"make", called "nmake", and their visual studio tools will
>accept either forward or backward slashes in paths.
>>

Ok, pedantically I meant the commands that come as part of the system. Most
external tools such as Microsoft's compilers have always accepted forward
slashes interchangeably with backslashes. They also usually accept '-' as
an option character interchangeably with '/'. The 'standard' commands
though seem to go to a lot of effort to reject forward slashes in paths,
and the CD command seems to be the only one where this usage gets through
the net.

That seems right, though I don't think Microsoft is deliberately
being difficult. They never put much effort into the command
line; they were trying to imitate the the Mac GUI more than the
Unix shell.

I just tried, and on XP the "explorer" will accept forward
slashes, immediately re-displaying them as backslashes.


--
--Bryan

[baalbek]

Re: Windows vs. Linux

Andy Dingley wrote:

>Python and Ubuntu rock...go fot it.

>
That's nice. I've just burned myself a new Ubuntu f*ck-a-duck release CD

Now, just out of curiosity, what's f*ck-a-duck?

Baalbek

[siggy2@supereva.it]

Re: Windows vs. Linux


Duncan Booth wrote:
[CUT]

>
C:\>cd /Documents and settings
The system cannot find the path specified.
>
C:\>cd /DDocuments and settings
>
C:\Documents and Settings>

that's because the
cd /D is interpreted as
"change drive and directory"
so I imagine it enables some kind of command extension

but anyway you're right: m$ CMD is weird
bye,
PiErre