[Xitami] CGI

[Brian {Hamilton Kelly}]

In message <152122595673.20030324101002@rci.rutgers.edu>
   Paul Reid writes:

> Also: Xitami often handles DOS-type back-slash directory syntax
> correctly, but forward-slash works too and maybe more reliably.
> Xitami will translate forward-slash syntax to back-slash on DOS
> filesystems, but NT/XP systems actually take / just as well as \.

Are you saying that you know for a fact that Xitami translated forward
slashes into backslashes under "DOS filesystems" (which presumably
includes Win9x/ME)?  Because I wonder why it bothers; DOS filesystem
internals have accepted forward slashes interchangably with backslashes
since DOS v1.0; it's only in a command-line that one has to use back-
slashes (because the forward slash has been stolen as the switch[1]
character to introduce command-line options).  Writing in Turbo-C and
VC++ under Win95, I have often used forward slashes in a path within an
fopen() call.

Not that it's particularly significant, but it does permit the programmer
to get away from the tyranny of the back-slash :-)

[1] Prior to DOS v4.01, one could use the SWITCHAR command (or poke a
character into the relevant memory location) to cause DOS to use '-'
instead of '/' for options (a  la Unix); with this change, one could then
use forward slashes in filepaths on the command line.
-- 
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}                                          bhk@dsl.co.uk
    "We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would.  Yet we are
    untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them".
                                              George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1919