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

[Lincoln Stein]

For that matter, you can create a directory named ":".  Unix is fatally 
flawed.  Let's throw it out!

Lincoln

On Thursday 22 May 2003 10:02 am, Andreas Kahari wrote:
> 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

-- 
========================================================================
Lincoln D. Stein                           Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
lstein at cshl.org			                  Cold Spring Harbor, NY
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