[Bioperl-l] Why is '+' a delimiter in $OBDA_SEARCH_PATH?

[Andreas Kahari]

On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 07:48:47AM -0400, Brian Osborne wrote:
> Bioperl-l,
> The character '+' is being used a delimiter in this variable instead of the
> standard Unix ';'. If I'm not mistaken one can use '+' in a directory or
> file name, whereas ';' seems not to be allowed. In fact, isn't "lost+found"
> a system directory in some Unixes? Anyway, I will change this unless someone
> can convince me not to.
> Brian O.

The ';' may be part of a directory or file name without any
problem (just quote it for the shell).  The forward slash
('/'), however, is not allowed on Unix-type systems (Mac OS
X might have additional restrictions with ':'?).

The plus sign is very uncommon in file names, and the
"lost+found" directory (where 'fsck' stores files and
directories which doesn't have an associated name after a
system or disk crash) is about the only place I've ever
seen it...  Having said that I haven't seen ';' in a name
*anywhere*, but it's allowed.

    mkdir ';'
    ls -ldF ';'
    drwxr-x--x  2 ak       ensembl     4096 May 22 14:00 ;/

The standard search path delimiter is the ':' (see you $PATH
variable for example).

Andreas

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