Re: [PATCH] directory separator

[John Darrington]

On Thu, Jun 07, 2012 at 12:29:03AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
     On 06/07/2012 12:19 AM, John Darrington wrote:
     > Surely using a symbol instead of a literal constant makes maintenance 
easier not 
     > harder? 
     
     I don't see why.  For example:
     
       remove ("a/b");
     
     is simpler and easier to maintain than:
     
       #if DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR == '/'
        #define DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR_STRING "/"
       #elif DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR == '\\'
        #define DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR_STRING "\\"
       #else
        #error "Unknown DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR" DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR
       #endif
     
       remove ("a" DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR_STRING "b");

One reason is that one could easily find all the places where constructed paths 
are
used in Gnulib using grep.

Another reason is that it would be trivial to add support for some future 
operating 
system that decides to use a different character (neither / nor \) as the 
directory
separator.

A third reason:  "a/b" looks to me like a mathematical expression, whereas 
"a" DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR_STRING "b" is explicit and unambiguous.


Anyway, if you really have an aversion to this patch I won't force it upon you 
until
I have some hard evidence that it is causing a tangible problem.  

(It would make our job easier however, if these "probably not the cause of the 
problem but who knows" issues were fixed upstream.)


Regards, 


J'


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