<whine>
All I'm trying to do is:
  1) Open a file
  2) Use FFILEINFO to find out what it's POSIX name is
  3) Move it out of the way with FRENAME
  4) Create a new file with the original name

Things were going smoothly.  I HPFOpened the file, did the FFILEINFO call and
got the name into a character array.  The rename worked beautifully.  I
appended a semi-colon to the POSIX name in the character array (as a
terminating character--see HPFOPEN documentation) and called HPFOPEN.  A bunch
of debugging down the road, I discover that

HPFOPEN IS USING THE INITIAL '/' WHICH SUPPOSEDLY SIGNALED THAT THIS PATH WAS
IN HFS FORMAT AS THE FIRST OF THE "MATCHED STARTING AND ENDING NAME DELIMITERS"

and so for the file /SYS/ASHTED/TI, it thinks the filename is "SYS"!  And no,
using option 41 to specify that this thing is POSIX doesn't help at all, any.

So fine, I give up on that and strmove the name to a Pascal string and switch
the HPFOPEN call to use option 51 which takes a Pascal string and doesn't
require delimiters of any kind.  Now I'm getting

The PASCAL XL STRING OPTION (item# 51) is not valid, or a bounds violation
occurred on this option.  (FILE OPEN ERROR -455)

It's almost 2am and I'm going home.  Tomorrow I'll put in the ugly code to hand
it a pac delimited with "&"s or some such.  But as far as I'm concerned, that
first behavior is ridiculous and the second bizarre.

</whine>

Ted
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Serv, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication
table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less?
Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasture--nothing but years
of effort can extract it. You can't hurry the process. Or pass from
arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way past quadratic equations
or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet
are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall
somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the
horizon. So died, for each of us, still bravely fighting, our mathematical
training; except for a set of people called "mathematicians" -- born so,
like crooks.
                        -- Leacock, Stephen