Re: Madness & frustration... What is a file? What is a Path?
Re: Madness & frustration... What is a file? What is a Path?
- Subject: Re: Madness & frustration... What is a file? What is a Path?
- From: Walter Ian Kaye <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 01:54:54 -0700
At 12:09p -0600 05/12/2004, Doug McNutt didst inscribe upon an
electronic papyrus:
At 09:23 -0700 5/12/04, Michelle Steiner wrote:
>"path to" yields an alias.
>--
>if u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb, bt if u rt lk ths u r a scrptr. (apologies)
Those do say a lot about AppleScript syntax.
That would be Unix syntax. My programmer friend Melissa told me about
a Unix person's license plate: "trk drv" :->
She says Unix words are abbreviated to within an inch of their life. :)
rm, mv, cp...
$PATH and path have been a part of UNIX and shells for a long time.
MSDOS had them, VMS had them. They are and always have been text.
Yes.
The reason why AppleScript's "path to" wasn't named "alias to" or
"alias of" is probably buried in the history of a classic OS
Kinda like dragging a disk to the trash to eject it. :)
that didn't want users to comprehend paths and working directories
which were reserved for the priesthood. In any case it's
English-like to expect a new user to understand the word path the
way he learned it.
The misnomer nomenclature is unfortunate, but then we do have similar
issues in human language so that really does make it English-like. ;)
AppleScript would do well to dump the alias concept altogether and
handle everything as a full path in an OS neXt environment.
Are you nuts? What if a file moves -- how the hell are you gonna find it?
Think for a moment about the power of an alias. Are you really
advocating throwing that power into the garbage?
And get rid of the file specification typedef too.
Meanwhile Apple added a new one, <<class furl>>. Looks like an FSSpec
in AS, but has slightly different attributes. I think there's a
technote or release note or something about it.
And yes. i cn rd ths bt i dnt wt a jb astng. They sound too much the same.
astng?
-W
"Real programmers only need one data type." --Melissa
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