Re: [MacPerl] 2 Simple Questions

[John W Baxter <jwblist@olympus.net>]

At 14:59 -0500 4/30/99, Jonathan W. Daniel wrote:
>$myFile = "folder1:myFile.txt";
>open(ADDFILE, ">> $myFile");
>print ADDFILE "$temp";
>close(ADDFILE);
>
>does not [work].

Yes...that means the volume named folder1, with a file at the top level
named myFile.txt
which is not what you have.

$myFile = ":folder1:myFile.txt";
etc

should work.

>
>And yes, folder1 is where it should be.
>
>And yes, I would like to know what the equivalent to "../" is in MacPerl if
>you don't mind.

Somewhat roughly, a single leading colon means "the current directory"
    :

Note that additional leading colons walk back toward the volume name.

Note also that each volume is the root of a file tree...there is no overall
root (the Unix /).

This came about when the heirarchical file system had to be grafted onto
the Mac without breaking the original "flat" file system (files *appeared*
to be in folders...they were all actually at the top (only) level of their
volume...the Finder created the folder illusion.  [That also meant that
given folders  "a" and "b" on a volume, you couldn't have files with the
same name in both a and b.]

The longest possible path was
"volume:file"
in the original Mac.

The leading : trick was part of what allowed old programs to continue
working with the new (1985 or 1986) file system.

   --John
--
John Baxter   jwblist@olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA

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