[Cuis-dev] macOS directory and file names containing colons

[Bernhard Pieber]

Hi,

In macOS Finder it is possible to create directories and file names which contain forward slashes. I created a directory named a/b with a file named b/c. Under the hood the slash is converted to a colon, e.g.

bernhard at MacBookPro16 Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev % find . -name b:c

./a:b/b:c

See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13298434/colon-appears-as-forward-slash-when-creating-file-name

In Cuis the names are shown with colons as well. The following expression answers true:
(DirectoryEntry vmDirectory directoryMatching: 'a:b') exists. „true“

However, the following expression answers false:
(DirectoryEntry vmDirectory / 'a:b') exists.

The reason for this is that on macOS the colon is not a separator – it was in Classic Mac OS, while Cuis assumes it still is, see String class>>#pathSeparators:

pathSeparators
^'\:/'

Seeing this implementation made me realize the same problem exists for directory and file names including a backslash. While I can create them in Finder, Cuis does not fully support them.

Creating such directories fails as well:
DirectoryEntry vmDirectory assureExistenceDirNamed: 'bin:go'.
DirectoryEntry vmDirectory assureExistenceDirNamed: 'bin\go‘.

Interestingly, using SqueakCompatibility the following works:
(FileDirectory on: '/Users/bernhard/Entwicklung/Cuis/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev') createDirectory: 'bin:go'.
(FileDirectory on: '/Users/bernhard/Entwicklung/Cuis/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev') createDirectory: 'bin\go‘.

The best fix would probably be to make the path separator platform dependent. (However, given that Smalltalk platformName returns 'Mac OS' even on macOS, I am not sure how best to distinguish between Classic Mac OS and macOS.)

Cheers,
Bernhard
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