Re: Why is NSString->FSRef so hard?
Re: Why is NSString->FSRef so hard?
- Subject: Re: Why is NSString->FSRef so hard?
- From: Michael Ash <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:50:32 -0400
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Andrew Farmer <email@hidden> wrote:
> On 29 Apr 09, at 06:15, Mark Douma wrote:
>>
>> If you are working with file paths, you shouldn't be using
>> componentsSeparatedByString:, nor should you be defining "/" to be the
>> component you should be separating by. What if someone had your app inside
>> of a folder they named "Apps/Utilities"? The HFS+ filesystem actually uses a
>> colon as the path separator, so having a / in the name of a file or folder
>> is perfectly acceptable, but would likely cause a headache and unexpected
>> results if your code were to encounter it. (Go to the Finder and try adding
>> a /).
>
> What you're saying here is incredibly misleading, and actively harmful.
> While I believe that HFS+ uses ":" as a path separator on-disk, virtually
> all non-Carbon userspace code makes use of UNIX paths. Either Carbon or the
> Finder itself is swapping colons and slashes for display purposes - running
> "ls" should reveal that filenames which appear as slashes in the Finder
> appear as colons.
It is a baffling myth, and I can't understand how anyone with any
experience with the system would actually believe it. The OS goes
through a great deal of trouble to make HFS+ filesystems look and
behave exactly like any other UNIX-visible filesystem. Do you not use
Terminal? Do you not examine any of the hundreds or thousands of paths
flying through your application? They *all* use / as the path
separator.
(The reason a folder named Apps/Utilities does not break things is
because at the UNIX level this is represented as Apps:Utilities. / is
not allowed in filenames at that level, period. Doesn't matter what
filesystem you're on.)
Mike
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