Re: HFS paths (was Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
Re: HFS paths (was Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
- Subject: Re: HFS paths (was Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
- From: Axel Luttgens <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:19:40 +0100
Le 20 déc. 08 à 19:34, KOENIG Yvan a écrit :
Le 20 déc. 2008 à 19:11, Axel Luttgens a écrit :
OK, but then why do I get this one:
(POSIX file "/Volumes/Data") as text
--> "Data"
So, let's have a small recap:
(POSIX file "/System") as text
--> "BootDisk:System"
(POSIX file "/System1") as text -- A non existing item (file or
folder)
--> "BootDisk:System1"
(POSIX file "/Volumes/Data") as text
--> "Data"
(POSIX file "/") as text
--> "BootDisk:"
Clearly, the boot disk appears as an exception wrt file -> string
coercion in AppleScript: differing conventions are applied
according to the target. This is perhaps a very desirable behavior,
but unless clearly justified and stated in the language definition,
it tends to appear at least slightly inconsistent.
I don't see any exception.
If the passed Unix path ends with a slash, we get an HFS path ending
with a colon.
If the passed Unix path doesn't end with a slash, we get an HFS path
without an ending colon.
It seems to be coherent.
Hello Yvan,
Yes, your approach is rather appealing, in the sense that it seems to
bring some order in the behavior described above; and it is no
impossible that the implementation of the file reference to text
coercion in part relies upon such a reasoning.
Now, saying that this path
/
and that path
/path/to/some/item/
both end with a slash is syntactically correct, but semantically
misleading.
Indeed, in a path such as
/path/to/some/item
the first slash represents the (current) root directory, and the
subsequent slashes are path separators.
Put in other words, THE slash and the other slashes really are to be
distinguished.
In fact, things would have appeared more clearly if a special symbol
had been defined for the root directory, for example "^". Above paths
would then have been written
^
^path/to/some/item/
and no one wouldn't be tempted anymore to say that they end with the
same symbol.
In the hope I managed to be comprehensible,
Axel
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