Better way to handle Unix compatibility modes must be found

John E. Malmberg wrote:
> Are you going to have time to look at the patches that I submitted to
> MakeMaker and Test::Simple?
> 
> These are to support VMS when the DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT and
> DECC$EFS_CHARSET and related options are active.
> 
> These options make Perl on VMS look more like Unix, including returning
> filenames in Unix syntax.  Path tools has already been updated to work
> in this mode.

I had a look at this, and I can't apply it.  It was bad enough having special
case code for VMS, now there's three different styles of VMS to be considered.

Here's the mass of detection code:

        use VMS::Feature;
        my $vms_unix_rpt = VMS::Feature::current("filename_unix_report");
        my $vms_efs      = VMS::Feature::current("efs_charset");
        my $vms_case     = VMS::Feature::current("efs_case_preserve");
        $Is{VMS_mode}  = 0 if $vms_unix_rpt;
        $Is{VMS_unix}  = 1 if $vms_unix_rpt;
        $Is{VMS_lc}    = 0 if $vms_case;
        $Is{VMS_noefs} = 0 if $vms_efs;

That mercifully doesn't include the work around if VMS::Feature isn't there.
There's no way to expect Perl programmers to stick all that in their code just
to accommodate VMS.

But this diff here illustrates the real problem:

-    is( $mm->{INSTALLVENDORMAN1DIR}, File::Spec->catdir('foo','bar'),
+    my $expect = File::Spec->catdir('foo','bar');
+    $expect = VMS::Filespec::vmspath($expect) if $Is_VMS;
+    is( $mm->{INSTALLVENDORMAN1DIR}, $expect,
                      'installvendorman1dir (in %Config) not modified' );

Now every call to File::Spec, which is supposed to generate a portable path,
has to have extra code tacked onto the end to do more work.  If that's
necessary then File::Spec::VMS should be doing it.

In conclusion, this should all be built into File::Spec::VMS.


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