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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.uucp
Subject: Re: System V introduces yet another inconsistency
Message-ID: <542@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 2-Mar-85 13:13:18 EST
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.542
Posted: Sat Mar  2 13:13:18 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Mar-85 06:54:43 EST
References: <454@lsuc.UUCP> <424@bonnie.UUCP>
Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA
Lines: 42

Before we all jump on poor Dave, let us pause and turn to Chapter 1,
Verse UUCP(1), in the Good Book, Version 7:

	Pathnames may be one of

	(1)	a full pathname;

	(2)	a pathname preceded by '~user', where 'user' is a userid on
		the specified system and is replaced by that user's login
		directory;

	(3)	anything else is prefixed by the current directory.

No mention of '~' by itself.  Checking the 4.2BSD UUCP, it is special-cased
to refer to PUBDIR.  For those of you who may not need to know but who want
to know, it is a #define constant in the UUCP source which should be set to
the UUCP public directory (which should probably be left as
"/usr/spool/uucppublic").  This is used in other places; if a file can't
be moved to its final destination, it is sometimes moved to PUBDIR/something-
or-other and a mail message is sent out to that effect, mentioning PUBDIR
by name (so maybe you *do* need to know, in order to tell what it's talking
about).

Now maybe it doesn't appear in the V7 manual because it didn't exist in that
version of UUCP, or maybe it just wasn't documented.  I don't have V7
UUCP source handy, so I don't know.  I have the feeling it *was* added in
later versions of UUCP.  Now, in the C shell, "~" by itself refers to the
current user's home directory, so maybe in the V7 UUCP "~" by itself
referred to UUCP's home directory.  Then again, in vanilla V7
"/usr/spool/uucppublic" didn't exist either; "uucp"s home directory was,
if I remember correctly, "/usr/spool/uucp".

The later UUCPs do the right thing by not forcing UUCP's home directory
and the UUCP public directory to be the same directory.  I always use "~"
by itself to refer to the UUCP public directory.  However, there are systems
out there running V7, and "~" may or may not work there but it definitely wasn't
documented there.  If I remember correctly, the Law Society of Upper Canada is
running V7.  As such, Dave's documentation may very well make no mention of "~"
by itself.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy