LYNX-DEV Dired code (was Re: Bugs with Lynx 2.6 / SunOS 4.1.3_U1?)

[Klaus Weide]

On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, Martin Voges wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone installed Lynx 2.6 on a SunOS 4.1.3_U1 system (on a Sparc
> 20, compiled with gcc 2.4.5) ?  Can you confirm that there are bugs
> with the untagging of files and the display of "Up to [parent_dir]"
> in DIRED mode?
> 
> I gave details in messages archived at 
> http://lynx.cc.ukans.edu/lynx-dev/9609/0808.html and
> http://lynx.cc.ukans.edu/lynx-dev/9610/0045.html, but got no reply
> which leaves me wondering whether it is a local system problem or
> not.

I can confirm that I experienced the same problems with dired mode on
Linux, none of them are specific to SunOS.  There were more problems
with dired tagging, including memory corruption.

I seem to have fixed most problems, and will send patches to the list 
later.  I am surprised that not more people have reported problems.
From the archives, it appears that dired mode was once a popular topic...
but maybe most people who were interested in dired mode for providing
an interface to their dialup users have moved on to use Jumps files now.

Also, some of the problems may show up only (or more obviously) with
certain combinations of settings. The combination of -DDIRED_SUPPORT
with -DLONG_LIST, without -DNO_PARENT_DIR_REFERENCE, and with the option

 l(I)st directory style       : Mixed style

seems one most likely to provoke weird behaviour.  Access to memory that
already has been free()'d may lead to immediate aborting on some systems
and not on others. 

I didn't change some of the basic decisions in dired mode, like creating
URL's with a URL-escaped slash (%2F) appended to the name for subdirectories
(at least under the combination of conditions mentioned above), because
I didn't feel I understood why they were made.  Maybe someone who is
still around from the time when that code was written can explain the
reason for this, or whether it is an accident.

   Klaus

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