Re: How to get the preferred environment variable path separator?

[Thompson, David]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Alex Vong <address@hidden> wrote:
> "Thompson, David" <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 6:00 AM, Alex Vong <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Chris Marusich <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Info node "(guile) File System" describes a procedure for getting the
>>>> preferred file name separator of the operating system:
>>>>
>>>>  -- Scheme Variable: file-name-separator-string
>>>>      The preferred file name separator.
>>>>
>>>>      Note that on MinGW builds for Windows, both ‘/’ and ‘\’ are valid
>>>>      separators.  Thus, programs should not assume that
>>>>      ‘file-name-separator-string’ is the _only_ file name
>>>>      separator—e.g., when extracting the components of a file name.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Is there an equivalent procedure for getting the preferred environment
>>>> variable path separator, too?  I would expect such a procedure to return
>>>> the ":" string (or does it return a character?) on most GNU/Linux
>>>> distributions, since that is the separator e.g. for the PATH environment
>>>> variable.
>>>>
>>> I can't find one either. If the machine has perl/python, you could try
>>>   (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim) (ice-9 popen))
>>>   (read-line (open-pipe* OPEN_READ
>>>                          "perl"
>>>                          "-e"
>>>                          "use Config; print $Config{path_sep}"))
>>> or
>>>   (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim) (ice-9 popen))
>>>   (read-line (open-pipe* OPEN_READ
>>>                          "python"
>>>                          "-c"
>>>                          "import os; print(os.pathsep)"))
>>
>> Please don't do this.  Use file-name-separator-string.  Section 7.2.3
>> in the manual, titled "File System".  In Emacs, you can press 'i' to
>> search the manual for identifiers.
>>
>> Another way of finding out things like this is to use the REPL:
>>
>> scheme@(guile-user)> ,a separator
>> (guile): file-name-separator-string
>> (guile): file-name-separator?    #<procedure file-name-separator? (c)>
>> scheme@(guile-user)> file-name-separator-string
>> $2 = "/"
>>
> I think Christ is asking for ":" instead of "/", do we have environment
> path separator in Guile?

Sorry, I misunderstood.

The environment variable path separator is *not* defined depending on
the OS.  It is up to the programs that interpret these search paths to
specify what the separator should be.  ":" is the most common
separator, but that is just convention.  A search path is opaque to
the operating system, where environment variables are just strings
with no inherent meaning.

Hope this helps.

- Dave