Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom under Windows

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

"Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:

| On 6/12/07, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
| 
| > ...  Also, do you how to pass file names to Windows
| > utilities in a way that avoid damage due to command line parsing
| > -- Unix shell has more qouting rules which allow you to pass any
| > legal charater as part of filename (I plan to add a simple encoder
| > which quotes all characters that need quoting).  I hope that
| > Windows has equivalent functionality.
| >
| 
| As far as I know there is no method in Windows that allows to pass
| all legal characters via the command line. The common method to
| pass command line arguments with minimal interference from the
| shell is to enclose them in "quotation marks". To pass a quotation
| mark itself requires double "" but quotation marks are ignored if used
| as part  of a file name. The character \ (path separator) and * (wildcard)
| cannot be used in a file name even when occurring between "...".
| Comma , space semicolon ; and some other punctuation characters
| in file names is ok if appearing between " ... ", etc. etc.
| 
| It is hard to find a good reference but easy to find complaints. :-)
| Try:
| 
| http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/winpsh/cmdline_std.mspx

Indeed.

My personal opinion is that funny characters (yes, I consider
whitespace in pathnames as funny) in pathnames are Evil.  We should
not spend too much resource trying to support Evil beyond reasonable.
People who like spaces in pathnames should just learn leaving with
that restriction in Axiom.  Given the choice between Evil and useful
functionality in Axiom, I don't hesitate one second.

-- Gaby