At Sun, 24 Feb 2002 21:50:47 -0800 (PST), David L Norris 
<dave@webaugur.com> wrote:
>  On Sun, 2002-02-24 at 13:23, K. Harkins wrote:
>  > clearly there seems to be a problem in how swish-e parses VMS paths ....
>  > however is this known, and is there a workaround?
>
>  Well, I have no clue about VMS specifically.  This may not even be
>  related.  But, SWISH-E does have problems with directory name parsing on
>  Windows.  Some problems are ultimately caused by SWISH-E trying to "fix"
>  directory names.  And some are just plain bugs with the OS.  Bill and I
>  have recently discussed the problems on the developer list.  But, we've
>  not really come up with any magic solutions.  I do think we've
>  identified some places where we can make improvements in SWISH-E's
>  directory and file name parsing.
>
>
>  Bottom line, I think, is that Unix is pretty darn forgiving when it
>  comes to directory seperators.  ;-)
>
>
>  Details on Win32:
>  Windows has broken/inconsistent directory and file I/O functions;
>  particularly POSIX/Xenix compatibility functions.  stat() is just one
>  example.  Some functions in the Win32 API either require or forbid a
>  trailing directory seperator ('\\' or '/') depending on the semantics of
>  the situation.  For example, with one function, a network directory
>  (\\HOST\SHARE) might require a trailing slash while a local directory
>  (DISK:SOMEDIR) might forbid it.  Another function might work exactly
>  backwards from this.  There is no obvious consistency to which sets of
>  functions behave in which ways.  I assume this is an artifact of
>  hundreds of disconnected programmers merging various APIs and codebases
>  (DOS, OS/2, Xenix) into one "contiguous" Win32 API over years.  There
>  are probably special little "hacks" in each function which account for
>  the odd inconsistencies.  They make writing a portable program a pain,
>  though.

thanks, FYI, VMS has a few gotchas with how it treats directories ... 
I have occasionally ran into
situations where my only solution was to recursively remove all 
logical roots from the directory
spec (until I had the 'real' path) and then use that (unfortunately, 
that is not a guarantee of it
working in swish-e, as I found in my testing yesterday)

				-K