Re: directory and path syntax query

[Sandy Harris <sharris -at- dkl -dot- com>]

"Weiner, Kandis" wrote:

> I want to talk about a particular directory (which is relative to a program
> directory): \ProgramX\bin
> 
> What is the appropriate syntax for referring to this directory in a
> technical document:
> 
> c:\Program Files\Company\ProgramX\bin
> 
> \ProgramX\bin
> 
> .\ProgramX\bin

Those are completely different things!

The first one starts from the root (\) of drive c:

The second starts from the root of the current drive. If you're on f:
when you issue it, then it is equivalent to F:\ProgramX\bin  Even if
you're on C:, it is quite different from the 1st since it loooks for
ProgramX directly under the root, not under Program Files\Company.

The third starts from the current directory, wherever you are when
you give the command. If you happen to be in c:\Program Files\Company
then it is equivalent to the 1st. If you're in f:\ it is equivalent
to the second.

I would use the 2nd and 3rd only inside a script that included commands
to change disks and/or directories so I knew where I was and what they
pointed to.

For documents, and most scripts, I think you need to define a variable
to hold the name, and reference off that. Your doc would say something
like:

  The program may be installed wherever the administrator wants it; it
  may not even be on your machine, but rather somewhere else on the
  network. The default is to install it under

   c:\Program Files\Company\ProgramX

  Wherever it is installed, the administrator chooses the top directory
  for the install and we build other directories under that.

  In this document, we will refer to the top directory as $TOP, and
  the others as $TOP/bin, $TOP/lib and so on.

$TOP is Unix syntax. I don't know the MS-Dog/Windoze syntax; you should
likely substitute that.