Re: [AD] Some more features for platform-independent file system?

[Bob <ohannessian@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Evert Glebbeek wrote:
[snip]
> All true, but Allegro was designed to be a game library (though it 
> certainly has other uses), and I don't think a filesystem API is a logical 
> component of a game library. Also, Windows people who download a program 
> made with Allegro may have a hard time figuring out why it works 
> differently from what they're used to.

Perhaps. But it was my impression that Allegro will gain a virtual file 
system at some point (to replace datafiles). We'd then need to bridge those 
with the actual file system. So file routines aren't so out of scope.



> Code dealing with filesystems is probably the least portable of all - 
> there aren't even portable low level functions to read a directory.

Which is another reason why Allegro should provide them :)

[snip]
> Ah. Ok, I never use Windows Explorer as a file manager, so I hadn't 
> considered that. Does it behave well when opening such a file?

Yes, oping up the file works without problems, as long as you're not using 
Win16 applications (those tend to crash on weird files...).



[snip]
> You can do that? Have to say I never tried, but specifying "My 
> Computer/c:/Windows/notepad.exe" will actually work? Will it depend on the 
> language of the Windows installed?

No, that won't work. I think he was refering to the way explorer makes it 
seem to the user, and not how it's actually implemented by the code.


--
- Robert J Ohannessian
"Microsoft code is probably O(n^20)" (my CS prof)
http://pages.infinit.net/voidstar/