Re: [boost] Mac OS deprecating paths

From: Jesse Jones (jesjones_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-28 18:32:17

At 7:31 AM -0800 1/28/02, Darin Adler wrote:
>On 1/28/02 7:04 AM, "Jesse Jones" <jesjones_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>>>>  Aren't paths an implementation detail? What about OS's now and in the
>>>>  future that deprecate paths? I don't see why we can't create a higher
>>>>  level class that works just as well as a path-centric class, but also
>>>>  works well on the Mac OS.
>
>Jesse, I think you are overstating the case a bit when you say that paths
>are deprecated on Mac OS and always will be.

Deprecated is the wrong word. I think frowned upon is still correct though.

>There is only one real problem with paths on the Mac OS. For pre-OS-X
>versions of the Mac OS, there can be more than one volume with the same
>name, so a path doesn't uniquely identify a file.
>
>That's the reason paths were deprecated in pre-OS-X versions of the Mac OS.

That's one reason. The other reason is that paths are fragile. If the 
user moves a file while the program is running bad things will 
happen. If the app saves a path in a pref or something and the user 
later moves it bad things will happen. This is *bad*: Mac users don't 
know about paths or file systems. All they see are icons in the 
Finder and they expect to move almost everything wherever they want.

>Under Mac OS X, paths are not deprecated. Each volume is given a unique name
>in the Unix file system while it's mounted, although the
>duplicate-volume-name issue still exists within the Carbon file system
>interface. There are many OS X native programs that simply use paths and
>don't bother with the Carbon FSRef structure at all.

OS X complicates things. It's essentially three platforms in one: BSD 
Unix, Cocoa (the NeXT Objective-C app framework), and Carbon (an 
updated version of the Mac OS 9 APIs). These are all native 
applications, but only BSD Unix and Cocoa use paths (and Cocoa's 
dependencies upon paths are being reduced). I strongly doubt that 
many Carbon apps are using paths (and the majority of OS X apps are 
Carbon).

   -- Jesse
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