site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-dev@lists.apple.com On Aug 26, 2006, at 1:18 PM, Mark Gilbert wrote: The problem I have is that I am using file:///Volumes/Drive/Folder/File style URLs to pass pointers to files over a network connection. When I use CFURL to resolve a URL like: file:///Volumes/G4_HD/folder/file = Mike _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-dev mailing list (Darwin-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-dev/site_archiver%40lists.appl... As you can see, this is an inherently fragile way to do things. Even without the bug discussed above, I can't recommend this as a way to go. We need to pass around a file specification via TCP/IP between various different applications working on the same file from different computers. The file spec also has to go through an asset management system which needs to store the location as (unicode) text, then pop out the other side and be picked up again. What better mechanism would you recommend instead to identify a file which resides on a shared volume in a workgroup ?. The file is uniquely identified by two things; the share identifier tuple (machine,sharename) and the share-relative path. Your current scheme makes the (unreliable) assumption that a given share will always be mounted at the same local path but (as you have discovered) offers no guarantee of that. A more robust approach would be to pass around the share identifier and the share-relative path, and then on each client system translate the share identifier into a local path at the time of use. This would also facilitate (re)connecting to the share if it's not currently mounted. One additional point to consider; the share mounted in /Volumes is nominally under the control of the user. If robustness is important to you (and user navigation of the mounted share less so) you might consider having your application explicitly mount the share somewhere else where it can guarantee the local path translation for a given network share. This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com