Re: UNC path syntax

[Ed Huott <huott at pinebush dot com>]

In message <34035660.1323@elementalsoftware.com>, Tom Yonkman writes:
>     Just started using the gnu-win32 package and wonder if ls and friends 
>     can handle the UNC path syntax in some way? This would allow access to 
>     machines in my "Network Neighborhood", as the explorer so quaintly 
>     puts it.
>     

No.  Nothing built with cygwin32 can deal with UNC path names.  The
cygwin32 approach requires that you map a drive to any remote (network
neighborhood) volumes.  Inside the bash shell, a mapped network drive
such as N: can then be referenced using the path "//N".  This syntax
can, unfortunately, collide with the most logical choice for
referencing a network share, which would be something like:
"//ComputerName/SharedDrive".

There is a unix-like volume mounting scheme that lets you acces a
drive as a sub-directory (i.e. N: ==> /DriveN) something like the old
DOS "join" command, but this works *only* for apps built with
cygwin32.

Lack of UNC support can be a real drawback if you're dealing in an
environment that uses a mix of both native (Windows) and cygwin32
apps.

<ED>
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