[GRASS-dev] Windows-style Pathnames

[Paul Kelly]

On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Glynn Clements wrote:

> Note that the backslash is a shell metacharacter, so it will have to
> be protected from interpretation if it appears directly in a script or
> user input.

For that reason alone, perhaps easiest to use c:/grass/grassdata format as 
much as possible, at least as an interim measure?

> The biggest problem with scripts is when MSys decides to be "clever"
> and do automatic translation. IMHO, we would be better off using host
> syntax throughout.

OK but whether we use c:/ or c:\ we still have the same problem with 
setting the PATH in scripts Huidae was talking about. But it remains to be 
seen how big a problem it is I guess.

> So far as I'm concerned, the "Windows" version
> should be just that, and not an "MSys" version. If people can live
> without the contents of the scripts directory, it shouldn't be
> necessary for end users to even have MSys.

Yes. I thought that but wasn't sure. So Msys and MinGW are needed only for 
compilation? And it should be possible for a user to run the scripts if 
necessary using another shell, not necessarily the Msys one? Perhaps 
determined by a GRASS_SH environment variable. And it's the shell's 
responsibility to make sure that the various Unix commands work OK when 
called from within its environment then. Am I making sense?