Re: [RFC] Do not treat '\' as escape character on MinGW Windows hosts

Joel Brobecker
2010-04-22T10:37:31Z

> I agree too except when we're talking about something that is
> essentially a UNIX tool. And, I don't see how you can talk about the
> pain of doubling up the backslashes if you're talking about cutting and
> pasting.

Perhaps I shouldn't have based some of my argumentation on convenience,
since the degree of convenience varies from user to user [1], and thus
is a weak argument at best.

What we need to decide, as a group, is whether GDB is indeed a Unix tool,
and whether GDB should treat the Windows users as Unix users stuck on
Windows (I definitely feel that way everytime I have to do Windows work).
However, my observation of the group of users that sent me some feedback
do not have that perception at all. For them GDB is just a tool, not
a Unix tool, so they do not understand why GDB does not accept valid
Windows paths.

> I know I'll be outvoted here but I I hate cluttering code with MS-DOS
> workarounds.

Understood, and it's not obvious to me that you'll be outvoted. This
is why I am asking for comments more than a review at this point.
I would like to challenge the "workaround" term, though :-P. I much as
I dislike Windows (and believe me, I really dislike this platform),
I think that if we are going to support Windows, we should support it
as a first class citizen.

--
Joel

[1]: Most of my Windows work is done remotely from a Linux machine,
where copy/pasting is super easy (I have ctrl-y configured to paste
in my xterm).