4 ms·

> https://www.devever.net/~hl/windowsdefeat https://www.devever.net/~hl/windowsdefeat I was thinking along the same lines. WSL looks like a half-hearted and l

> https://www.devever.net/~hl/windowsdefeat https://www.devever.net/~hl/windowsdefeat I was thinking along the same lines. WSL looks like a half-hearted and late attempt to put some POSIX lipstick on the Windows pig, but for me at least it doesn't really stick. The implementation is as messy and intransparent as usual in Windows. When I have to use Windows, Cygwin is still my tool of choice to make the system usable at all.

pjc50 6y ago
I see it as a transition layer. Apple can get away with "sorry we've just changed architecture, all your binaries are obsolete again, deal with it" but Windows can't. The ground is being laid, piece by tiny piece, for more POSIXism. The two most visible warts - CRLF and '\' - are the ones to watch for when they get deprecated.
- cesarb 6y ago
  > The two most visible warts - CRLF and '\' - are the ones to watch for when they get deprecated. There's a third wart, the path length limit of 260 characters. Work on that seems to already be in progress: https://docs.microsoft.com/pt-br/archive/blogs/jeremykuhne/net-4-6-2-and-long-paths-on-windows-10 https://docs.microsoft.com/pt-br/archive/blogs/jeremykuhne/n... (though I see no mention of a related and more annoying wart, which is not allowing some simple file names like "aux.c").
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    You can always use \\?\ namespace paths to get above the 260 character limit, just not all Win32 applications can work with those files. Don't expect AUX, COM1, etc to be fixed any time soon, because that is a huge backwards compatibility issue.
    - captainmuon 6y ago
      > Don't expect AUX, COM1, etc to be fixed any time soon, because that is a huge backwards compatibility issue. I think that this is also possible to fix. Always require the colon ('CON:' instead of 'CON'), and make this opt-in per process, like "longPathAware". Sure, old apps will choke if you now create a CON file. But 1) the file dialogs could show a warning when doing that, 2) you can already create filenames that make old apps choke and 3) they could transparently show them as CON~1 or something in those old apps.
      - ygra 6y ago
        A warning wouldn't really fix much for most people. »This file name might potentially not work in certain applications« is far too vague for anyone to determine whether it's a good idea to name the file that way or not. And erring on the side of caution brings you to the same situation as right now that you better avoid those names. For the dedicated there's a way to create them anyway, and many power user tools allow you to create and handle them.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Every Windows shell (CMD.EXE and PowerShell and even File Explorer) has always accepted / paths. \ paths will never go away due to backwards compatibility. Most Windows apps happily work with documents that are CR only, including Notepad since Windows 7 IIRC. CRLF will likely stay the default for backward compatibility reasons, too. You can blame IBM for both of those things as IBM mainframes were CRLF and IBM thought / a better option prefix key than a path separator.
  - ygra 6y ago
    Note that paths with / won't always work in cmd when using built-in commands. For executables and their command lines, sure, but for at least some built-in commands you must use \ for path arguments because the parser otherwise parses an option. Not sure about CR-only, but Notepad only recently-ish (a year ago, perhaps) gained the ability to work with LF-only text files. Mind you, that's probably not a fix in Notepad, but really in the decades-old Win32 edit control ... (which might give a hint as to why this was neither much of a priority, nor probably an easy fix while not breaking anything else).
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      Right, I meant LF-only, that was a brain fart. It is recent to Notepad, but I don't it is that recent. But yes, also Notepad for a long time was the simplest wrapper around the Win32 edit control possible, and likely rarely a priority. (Similar too how long WordPad was merely the simplest wrapper around the RTF control.)

pjc50 6y ago

I see it as a transition layer. Apple can get away with "sorry we've just changed architecture, all your binaries are obsolete again, deal with it" but Windows can't. The ground is being laid, piece by tiny piece, for more POSIXism. The two most visible warts - CRLF and '\' - are the ones to watch for when they get deprecated.

cesarb 6y ago
> The two most visible warts - CRLF and '\' - are the ones to watch for when they get deprecated. There's a third wart, the path length limit of 260 characters. Work on that seems to already be in progress: https://docs.microsoft.com/pt-br/archive/blogs/jeremykuhne/net-4-6-2-and-long-paths-on-windows-10 https://docs.microsoft.com/pt-br/archive/blogs/jeremykuhne/n... (though I see no mention of a related and more annoying wart, which is not allowing some simple file names like "aux.c").
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  You can always use \\?\ namespace paths to get above the 260 character limit, just not all Win32 applications can work with those files. Don't expect AUX, COM1, etc to be fixed any time soon, because that is a huge backwards compatibility issue.
  - captainmuon 6y ago
    > Don't expect AUX, COM1, etc to be fixed any time soon, because that is a huge backwards compatibility issue. I think that this is also possible to fix. Always require the colon ('CON:' instead of 'CON'), and make this opt-in per process, like "longPathAware". Sure, old apps will choke if you now create a CON file. But 1) the file dialogs could show a warning when doing that, 2) you can already create filenames that make old apps choke and 3) they could transparently show them as CON~1 or something in those old apps.
    - ygra 6y ago
      A warning wouldn't really fix much for most people. »This file name might potentially not work in certain applications« is far too vague for anyone to determine whether it's a good idea to name the file that way or not. And erring on the side of caution brings you to the same situation as right now that you better avoid those names. For the dedicated there's a way to create them anyway, and many power user tools allow you to create and handle them.
WorldMaker 6y ago
Every Windows shell (CMD.EXE and PowerShell and even File Explorer) has always accepted / paths. \ paths will never go away due to backwards compatibility. Most Windows apps happily work with documents that are CR only, including Notepad since Windows 7 IIRC. CRLF will likely stay the default for backward compatibility reasons, too. You can blame IBM for both of those things as IBM mainframes were CRLF and IBM thought / a better option prefix key than a path separator.
- ygra 6y ago
  Note that paths with / won't always work in cmd when using built-in commands. For executables and their command lines, sure, but for at least some built-in commands you must use \ for path arguments because the parser otherwise parses an option. Not sure about CR-only, but Notepad only recently-ish (a year ago, perhaps) gained the ability to work with LF-only text files. Mind you, that's probably not a fix in Notepad, but really in the decades-old Win32 edit control ... (which might give a hint as to why this was neither much of a priority, nor probably an easy fix while not breaking anything else).
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Right, I meant LF-only, that was a brain fart. It is recent to Notepad, but I don't it is that recent. But yes, also Notepad for a long time was the simplest wrapper around the Win32 edit control possible, and likely rarely a priority. (Similar too how long WordPad was merely the simplest wrapper around the RTF control.)