Date: Fri, 24 Oct 97 12:18:58 EDT
Message-Id: <9710241618.AB20799@gensym1.gensym.com>
To: new-httpd@apache.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95dg3.971023115048.32761C-100000@twinlark.arctic.org>
	(message from Dean Gaudet on Thu, 23 Oct 1997 11:51:09 -0700 (PDT))
Subject: Re: NT: spaces in paths
From: Ben Hyde <bhyde@gensym.com>
Sender: new-httpd-owner@apache.org
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Reply-To: new-httpd@apache.org


Some thoughts about NT command line.
 - The reminding that spaces appear on other platforms is
   helpful.  If you've ever parsed command lines on tops-20,
   rsx/11, ITS, Mac, the memories will help.
 - The switch characters look like the real delimeters here,
   i.e. the slash, and dash.
 - Spaces can appear on the front of filenames, this explains
   why things like "cd /d  foo" fail to get to "foo" but will
   get to " foo".
 - Parsing past the command name, given the command line,
   is hard given that it too may have spaces in it.
 - Parsing the characters after the last switch is a little
   hard.  If the last switch takes an arg it might get those
   characters otherwise they are probably the target of the
   command.
 - Commands with multiple targets seem to require the use of 
   switches.
That said I now think somebody has proably written the MS equivalent
of getopt which works from these kinds of principles - I just haven't
found it yet.
   - ben h
---
"The box says 'requires Windows 95, NT, or better' so yeah use a Mac."