File specification regularity

[Erland Sommarskog]

Dave Arnold (dave at arnold.UUCP) writes:
>To all you future filesystem designers, please avoid the following:
>SYS$SYSROOT[UTILS.ANUNEWS.SRC.NEWS_SRC]NEWSADD.OBJ;1
>I prefer:
>/sysroot/utils/anunews/src/news_src/news_add.obj

On the other hand, on VMS you can do the following:
DEFINE/TRANSLATION=CONCEALED NEWS_ROOT SYS$SYSROOT:<UTILS.ANUNEWS> 
(This may be the wrong syntax. My apoligies if so.) and then refer to 
the file as NEWS_ROOT:<SRC.NEWS_SRC>NEWSADD.OBJ. Or why not proceed 
with: DEFINE NEWS_SRC NEWS_ROOT:<SRC.NEWS_SRC>, and then simply
say NEWS_SRC:NEWSADD.OBJ.

On Unix you can of course do:
setenv NEWS_ROOT /sysroot/utils/anunews
and refer to the file as $NEWS_ROOT/src/news_src/news_add.obj but
it doesn't seem like that translation of enviroment variables is
built in the file system as logical-name translation is on VMS. 
Thus, you can't be sure that every utility you use will understand
$NEWS_ROOT, in which case you have to remember the entire path.
(I may be totally wrong about Unix here. If so, please correct me.)
-- 
Erland Sommarskog            
ENEA Data, Stockholm         
sommar at enea.UUCP