On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 4:36 AM Bob van der Poel <b...@mellowood.ca> wrote: > > I've got a program which accepts an optional env variable listing a single > or multiple directory for the app to use. I've done a bit of a search and > see both a comma and semicolon being used/suggested as a path separator. > Any consensus on which is better? > > MYPATHS=foo,bar,woof > or > MYPATHS=foo;bar;woof > And, certainly not > MYPATHS=foo,bar;woof > > I did think I could be clever and check to see if the string contained a , > or ; and spit it accordingly, but then what if the reason (hopefully, > pretty damned unlikely!) that a , or ; is being used as part of a path name? >
Both are very much possible. I would recommend following a well-known standard; fortunately, there are plenty to choose from. 1) Separate them with spaces, because words. 2) Separate them with commas, because lists in English. 3) Separate with colons the way $PATH is. Whichever way you do it, you'll have to cope with the possibility that the character exists in a path name. That means you'll either need an escaping system (eg "\ " meaning a space, or ",," meaning a comma) or a quoting system (so "foo,bar",woof would mean two entries, the first of which contains a comma). Or you just acknowledge that MYPATHS is unable to represent something with the delimiter - which is how $PATH works - and then you'll probably need some workaround for that, like maybe a command line argument. The one thing I really would *not* recommend is a DWIM arrangement of having it guess at which delimiter to use. :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
