Re: [cc65] Filenames for POSIX functins on CBM targets

Hi!

On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 02:20:02PM +0200, Oliver Schmidt wrote:
> As far as I understand on CBM targets currently one can prepend a
> filename to be given to open() with "0#" or "1#" to select the "drive
> number" (whatever that acually is). However there's no way to select
> the 'unit number' and that seems a big issue to me.

We had this discussion several times. As you can see from the discussion that
comes up (again), the issue is unsatisfactory but a proper solution is
complex.

Problems are:

  * We want to support unit numbers and device numbers.

  * We want to be able to specify subdirectories.

  * There are already kernal replacements that use a special syntax for both.

  * Everybody has his pet syntax for this purpose.

  * Most people have just one floppy (#8) and won't really benefit, but will
    have to pay the price (= memory) for a complex file name parser.

  * CBM people are used to specify the device number separately. A special,
    cc65 only syntax will confuse most users more than it helps. Especially
    if the syntax is different from that used in kernal extensions like
    Jiffy-DOS.

What this means is that I'm not strictly against such an extension, but I
don't see a way to solve all the problems named above. In comparison, using
_curunit isn't very elegant either, but at least it doesn't eat lots of
memory.

> Please note that I'm intentionally trying to not open up a discussion
> on supporting IDE64 / CMD / <you name them> filename extensions for
> filesystems with subdirectories. I'm just looking for a consistent way
> to describe all file locations on a plain vanilla CBM DOS system.

There's no way to avoid this discussion, because people using more than one
drive often use stuff like IDE64 or Jiffy-DOS devices. So the people which are
your target are also the ones that have experiences with other solutions.

Regards


        Uz


-- 
Ullrich von Bassewitz                                  uz@musoftware.de
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