Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: use of : instead of / Message-ID: <10735@smoke.BRL.MIL> Date: 14 Aug 89 21:53:12 GMT References: <8908130642.AA28955@trout.nosc.mil> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 11 In article <8908130642.AA28955@trout.nosc.mil> delton@pro-carolina.cts.com (Don Elton) writes: >They were going to require nulls as separators but the use of multiple chars >as separators was a compromise. Which way would you like to see it done to >support using "/" and/or ":" in a file or directory's name? Nulls would have been utterly horrible! Think of the problems in using that from C programs. Whenever a character is given a special meaning, e.g. delimiter, one should at the same time make provisions for an escape mechanism so that the special meaning can be removed when necessary.