At 5:23 PM -0800 3/1/08, Michael G Schwern wrote:
>John E. Malmberg wrote:
>>>What does it mean? Is it a synonym for cwd?
>>
>>No. It means "SYS$DISK:[]." which is a file with a null name and a null
>>extension. A period delimiter between a file and the extension is always
>>present.
>
>Rather different from cwd. Ok then.
No, it *is* the same as cwd for all practical purposes. What John
said is technically true, but the important thing is that the null
components are supplied from the current working directory and
current volume. To any native utility, [] means the current working
directory on the current volume and is more or less equivalent to ./
on unixy systems. sys$disk:[] is really the same thing but just
specifies the current volume explicitly, which of course has no
equivalent on unixy systems.
>As File::Spec::VMS->catdir('', 'foo', 'bar') and File::Spec::VMS->('foo',
>'bar') are currently equivalent, I really can't see anyone bothering with the
>former. I'm happy with just calling it a bug. The "leading empty string
>indicates absolute path" hasn't always worked right.
I think the reason catdir ignores an empty first component was that
splitdir used to create spurious empty first components, but that was
fixed here:
http://public.activestate.com/cgi-bin/perlbrowse/p/31431
--
________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
difficult than getting in."
Brad Leithauser
