Re: [MacPerl] obscure bug in MacPerl application

[Peter Hartmann <hartmann@mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp>]

At 9:40 Uhr +0200 11.06.1998, Matthias Ulrich Neeracher wrote:
>MacPerl converts all text arguments in the AppleEvent that look like paths to
>existing files into FSSpecs first. It's indeed a good question whether this is
>a good practice or not, but I'm not inclined to change it at the moment.

Well, if this is a feature, it would have been nice to read about it
somewhere. Would have saved me several hours of bug hunting. Maybe
something for Chris to mention in the "The Book, Part II".
So, essentially, when sending a list of strings looking like folder paths
and some of them actually exist, final colons are stripped for the latter.
Hm, not very convincing. Furthermore, an FSSpecs for a folder on the Mac in
principle ends with a colon, if it exists or not. And both

FSpDirCreate "Macintosh HD:ABC"

and

mkdir "Macintosh HD:ABC", 0777

work with or without a colon at the end. (This is of course the reason for
existing code to work in the first place.) But why having colons stripped,
for a mere coincidence of a string and an existing folder path name? I
guess this is more convenient for you, Matthias, as the programmer of
MacPerl, but users (including you ;) ) will have to add a line like

if ($string !~ /:$/){$string .= ":"}

to make sure everything works as expected. Or remove trailing colons in
apple script before sending them (nothing that can be done very easily
without the use of an OSAX).
This is again one of the "MacPerl-is-not-really-UNIX-and-not-really-Mac"
issues.
Sorry for stubbornly insisting on my point of view. But nevertheless: Thank
you for being "the programmer of MacPerl"!

Peter


Peter Hartmann
Visiting Scholar
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan
e-mail:
hartmann@mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp (preferred)
phv00542@askic.kic.ritsumei.ac.jp




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