Re: [platform-core-dev] org.eclipse.core.runtime.Path issue with colons

[John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

That is a fairly accurate summary of
the situation. If I were writing a gripe list about IPath, I would also
add the fact that it is always case-sensitive, regardless of the underlying
file system. This causes problems on platforms such as Windows, for example.
 Despite these problems, API contract compatibility is taken very
seriously in the Eclipse platform, even when that API has flaws. 

Ed Warnicke wrote on 08/31/2004 05:45:23 PM:

> OK, let me see if I understand correctly:
> 
> 1)    IPath provides segmented paths, for this purpose we
>        need a path separator character.
> 2)   We disqualify from path segments all characters that
>       are used as path separators on known platforms
>       ('/' and '\\') whether they are path seperators
on the
>       running platform or not so that in the event
that
>       someone incorrectly hard codes a literal (as
opposed
>       to using System.getProperty("path.separator")).
> 3)   In order to support the drive letter feature on Windows
>       (and I've still seen no other rationale) we need
a
>       driver separator character (hard coded as ':').
 We therefore
>       disqualify the character ':' whether the platform
we are on
>       has driver letters or not.
> 4)   This causes breakage because it invalidates path segments
>        that are perfectly valid on POSIXs compliant
platforms
>        (pretty much everything but Windows).
> 5)   Because this behavior is part of a published interface we
>       are not going to fix it.
> 
> Is this an accurate summary of the situation?
> 
> This problem has been open for almost 2 years now... it's only going
to
> get more painful to fix going forward.  I'm willing to do the
work to 
> fix it,
> but not if I'm just going to be shutdown for trying to change a 'published
> interface' even if that interface is broken.