Re: lynx-dev dev.23: extended INCLUDE syntax broken for DOSPATH

[Vlad Harchev]

On Sun, 25 Apr 1999, Klaus Weide wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Vlad Harchev wrote:
> > 
> >  I afraid we have to expect similar behaviour on VMS port - as I understand,
> > the VMS filename always contains ':'. I see several variants (not mutually
> > exclusive)
> > 1) On DOS - if that ':' is preceeded with letter and nothing else (perhaps
> > spaces), we can treat such first ':' as part of the name, and expect option 
> > names to start after second ':'.
> > 2) I don't know anything about VMS filesystem approach, so here is 
> > conditional
> > solution:
> >  If each VMS pathname contain _exactly_ one colon, then we can expect option
> > names after second colon, otherwise 
> >  disable this functionality for VMS (since this feature is designed for ISPs
> > that provide shell account with lynx, and IMO there are few ISPs with VMS
> > installed, then this decision won't be painful)
> > 
> > What do you think?
> 
> 3) Choose a different syntax, with a different delimiter!
> There are bound to be problems with ':' not matter how cleverly
> you try to detect which ':' is part of a filename and which isn't.
> 
> The delimiter should be unlikely to normally occur in filenames on
> any known system.  It can still be a legal (but unusual) filename
> character, in that case files with that character just cannot be
> used here - not a big hardship.  That's better than introducing
> an escape mechanism (which would create more confusion).
> 
>    Klaus

 Probably that character should be '*'? What lynx developers think about it
(suggestions of characters are welcome)

 Another idea - seems that ':' is unusual character in unix filenames - so we
can support this feature on unix as it is (without changing extra logic like
quoting, escaping, etc - just ifdef'ing), and disable it on DOS,VMS, MacOS - I
don't think there are a lot of ISP that run these OSes.
 Or we can provide this feature on these OSes, but delimiter will be different
from ':' for them - may be '*' on these OSes and still ':' on unix?

 So any opinions?

 Best regards,
  -Vlad