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Re: File Naming Between Cygwin and Windows


At 01:55 PM 7/10/2005, you wrote:
>Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin <at> cygwin.com> writes:
>
>> 
>> On Jul 10 06:03, Ross MacGillivray wrote:
>> > Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin <at> cygwin.com> writes:
>> > > Usually it chokes, like the underlying OS.  As a workaround you'll
>> > > find so called "managed mounts", which only work on fresh created
>> > > directories so managed mounts are no general solution.
>> >  
>> > Do you know happen to know what the 'standard' solution is, when running
>> > KDE-on-Cygwin, for this incompatibility in file naming between cygwin 
>> > and windows?
>> 
>> There is no incompatibility in file naming between Cygwin and Windows.
>> If KDE is using filenames which are not useable on Windows, then KDE
>> is incompatibility in file naming to Windows (and Cygwin).
>> 
>> Corinna
>> 
>
>Yes, I agree - poor choice of words.  There is no incompatibility between
>cygwin and windows.
>
>The question I was trying to raise is:
>  "Is managed mounts the most appropriate work around in Cygwin for an issue 
>   which may be, admittedly, caused by KDE-on-Cygwin?"


It is the only way currently.


>Also as a future Cygwin service would it not make sense to have a translation
>layer in Cygwin which automatically translates conformant linux/unix names into
>conformant windows names.   If this is what managed mounts does, I apologize
>in advance, since I am not familiar with managed mounts.


I doubt adding a translation layer to Cygwin's already complex and time-
consuming path handling code is the way to go here but I assume if someone
could come up with a patch that addressed these concerns, it might be 
acceptable.  But this would be a very high bar to meet.  

Managed mounts don't do a translation in the way you described.  They encode 
the illegal character in a way that the Windows file system accepts.  In 
Windows, the file name looks quite different but in a managed mount 
directory, the file looks exactly as requested.  There is no mapping
of characters as you suggest in your scheme.  You should look at and play
around with them a little to get a feel for how they work.

Really, the easiest thing to do though is make the file name created be 
more generally portable.  This should be possible in the Cygwin port at
least, even if the upstream maintainers wouldn't consider such a change
(and I don't know that they wouldn't).



--
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
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Holliston, MA 01746                     


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