Absolute File Paths - Bug or bad Docs

[Devin Asay]

On Sep 24, 2008, at 7:53 PM, Kay C Lan wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 7:25 AM, Bob Sneidar <bobs at twft.com> wrote:
>
>> I thought that if you wanted to refer to an absolute path in unix  
>> you would
>> use /volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications. This is of course for the  
>> Mac OS.
>> Perhaps other Unix variants use something else for the mount points  
>> besides
>> volumes, but the idea is the same.
>>
>>
> Sorry, you mean OSX not Mac OS 9. I've just checked, my reference to  
> the HD
> being partitioned is incorrect, well only slightly if you consider a  
> normal
> HD is a single partition. On OSX for an absolute path you can use  
> either
> "/volumes/mac hd/Applications" or "/Applications" - but you can't  
> use "/mac
> hd/Applications".  What is important is that both what the Docs say,  
> and the
> examples they give are incorrect for OSX, but as Sarah has pointed  
> out they
> are correct if you are dealing with the old Classic Mac OS. No idea  
> for Win
> or Linux.

It's not surprising that the examples in the docs are correct if you  
are working in the Mac Classic environment, since, to my knowledge,  
RunRev (or at least Jeanne DeVoto, who wrote the first version of the  
docs) was working primarily in the Mac OS classic environment at the  
time the docs were first written.

I'll admit, this threw me for a loop when I first switched over to OS  
X. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my file paths didn't  
work, until I figured out the Unix/OS X convention of "/" referring to  
the boot volume.

For an introduction to file paths, written for beginning Rev coders, see

http://revolution.byu.edu/extfiles/exFiles.php

I've tried here to distill my sometimes painfully-acquired knowledge  
to help my students avoid the pitfalls I encountered as a noobie. As  
always, if anyone comes across inaccuracies, I'd love to get feedback.

Regards,

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University