On Sun, 01 Jul 2018 03:18:23 +0000, eryk sun wrote: > On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 1:44 AM, Steven D'Aprano > <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> On Sat, 30 Jun 2018 23:36:40 +0000, eryk sun wrote: >> >>> Only use forward slashes for legacy DOS paths passed to Windows API >>> functions. Do not use forward slashes for paths in command line >>> arguments, \\?\ prefixed paths, or registry paths. >> >> I don't see why this is relevant, or at least not the "command line >> arguments" and "registry paths" parts. > > Command-line arguments are relevant to executing a child process, e.g. > via subprocess.Popen.
Ah, yes they are. But using subprocess is a little more of an advanced use than regular file handling. But your point is taken. >> I guess that if the user is using a path beginning with \\?\ they may >> or may not need to use backslashes, but I have no way of testing it, >> and I would expect that Python will correctly replace //?/ with >> backslashes the same as it does for any other file system path. > > The Windows API handles this, but not for a path that begins with \\?\. But what about the *Python* API? The Python open() function, and all the high-level os.* and os.path.* functions which take paths as strings are supposed to automatically convert forward slashes to backslashes. Aren't they? > The intent of this prefix is to bypass DOS-path normalization -- > allowing paths with length up to 32K characters that can use otherwise > reserved DOS-device names or names ending in spaces or dots. > >> (Besides, Python doesn't have an API for interacting directly with the >> registry.) > > The standard library has winreg -- or _winreg in 2.x. Oh, I live and learn. > Bear in mind that forward slash is just a name character in NT. Interesting... That's rather like on HFS Plus, where / is an ordinary character allowed in file names (although Mac OS goes to extraordinary effort to ensure that tools that expect / as a path separator see it, and those which expect : as the path separator see it instead). > We only need to clearly state that the > Windows API allows using forward slash as the path separator in file > paths that do not begin with the \\?\ prefix. I prefer to also add a > warning about command-line arguments, since it isn't an improbable or > inconsequential problem Fair enough. -- Steven D'Aprano "Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing it everywhere." -- Jon Ronson -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
