[h-e-w] Absolute/relative pathnames under nt

[Underwood, Jonathan]

Hi

Given that ntemacs looks for .emacs in the directory specified by the HOME
environment variable, it seems odd to me that in ntemacs absolute filenames
begin with a drive letter, rather than a ~ as in unix. I quote from the
emacs lisp manual:

"All the directories in the file system form a tree starting at the root
directory. A file name can specify all the directory names starting from the
root of the tree; then it is called an absolute file name. Or it can specify
the position of the file in the tree relative to a default directory; then
it is called a relative file name. On Unix and GNU/Linux, an absolute file
name starts with a slash or a tilde (`~'), and a relative one does not. On
MS-DOS and MS-Windows, an absolute file name starts with a slash or a
backslash, or with a drive specification `x:/', where x is the drive letter.
The rules on VMS are complicated"

It seems to me that for ntemacs, given that ntemacs needs a home directory
to be specified via the HOME environment variable, and that emacs
understands the ~ to represent this home directory, that ntemacs should also
allow absolute filenames to begin with ~ a la unix.

This would make things a lot easier for eg. using load-file in your .emacs
for loading files consistently on different platforms etc.

Just a thought

jonathan.