[Bug: 21.4.20] Network Drives

[Steve Higham]

Vin, Stephen,

I'm sorry if I've missed something here, but I cannot think of any benefit
from trying to identify whether a file is executable under windows. Surely
the sensible approach it to try and execute it if requested, and report any
resulting failures.

I appreciate that the Unix approach of having an "executable attribute" has
benefits. Furthermore programs like xemacs should obviously respect this
attribute. However windows does not have this attribute. The OS shell and
all other systems, assume that all files are executable.

I can see no end of problems with this proposed function. Where the function
successfully identifies an executable file there will be no benefit. Where
the function fails to recognise a file as executable, the user will
presumably be told that his / her file is not marked as executable. This
will presumably cause loads of grief and no benefit.

Cheers,

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: ethersoft at gmail.com [mailto:ethersoft at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Vin
Shelton
Sent: 29 April 2007 13:12
To: Stephen J. Turnbull
Cc: Steve Higham; Benson Margulies; xemacs-beta at xemacs.org
Subject: Re: [Bug: 21.4.20] Network Drives

On 4/29/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> Steve Higham writes:
>
>  > My machine contains several perl scripts (*.pl) which are certainly
>  > executable. Can the "executable extension list" be modified as a
standard
>  > lisp variable?
>
> No, that's precisely why I consider it bogus, even though I haven't
> used Windows in years.  The list is implicit in a series of if ... else
> if ... clauses in the function.
>
> On the other hand, since I haven't been using Windows, I'm unsure
> whether there's a way to register an extension as executable, and how
> XEmacs could determine that at runtime.  So I need somebody who knows
> about that kind of thing to look at it.

I looked at the function; you're right - it's totally bogus.  There is
a registry key which defines file associations and we could
potentially use that.  I'll investigate a bit further.

  - Vin

-- 
The Journey by Mary Oliver
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6771&poem=30506