Re: Tilde

[cld@xxxxxxxx (Carl Distefano)]

Reply to note from Patricia M Godfrey  Sat, 9
Mar 2002 18:52:02 -0500

Patricia:

> I don't seem to be saying this clearly, since everyone
> misunderstands. If ALL your XyWrite files (Editor.exe,
> startup.int, etc.) are in Program Files, which to DOS is
> PROGRA~1, Editor.exe cannot find them, because it's reading the
> tilde with its default value of the soft hyphen.

I don't doubt there's a problem, but I question whether the source
of it is the tilde/soft hyphen. Xy has no problem creating,
editing, saving or deleting files and directories that have tildes
in their names, even if the discretionary hyphen is set to the
tilde. So why would it have trouble finding a directory named
PROGRA~1? It's a legal DOS name, after all (that's the raison d'etre
of these 8.3 LFN equivalents, no? Compatibility with DOS). You can
switch to it with a CD command issued from the Xy CMline or in a
BX...Q2 statement in XPL. Anyway, I'd think that EDITOR simply
searches for STARTUP.INT in the "current" directory (".") or the
directory that contains EDITOR (the path in ), either of
which should be readily accessible to it.

> yes, you can change [the discretionary hyphen]. But you change
> it in one of the default files. And to load them, you have to
> give EDITOR.EXE those files' fully qualified path names.

Not in STARTUP.INT, you don't. If the files to be loaded are
situated in the current directory (i.e., the directory that has
EDITOR.EXE), you can omit the path; for example:
BX load settings.dflQ2 . Should do so, I'd say, because it makes Xy
"portable" to any directory without the need to modify STARTUP.INT
every time.

Of course, Xy has to be able to find STARTUP.INT. But I come back
to the notion that, in principle, you shouldn't have to change the
discretionary hyphen to get Xy to recognize dirs and filenames with
tildes, including the current dir. How are you launching EDITOR?
Anything unusual there? What if you *forced* EDITOR to look for
STARTUP.INT, by launching with EDITOR.EXE,STARTUP.INT, or even
C:\PROGRA~1\EDITOR.EXE,C:\PROGRA~1\STARTUP.INT? Should work.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/