On Wed, 14 Apr 1999, Simon Burge wrote:
> Andrew Brown wrote:

> > then again, i also think that it would be really "neat" if i could
> > make a symlink that pointed to @ (or some other convenient unorthodox
> > character or word that wouldn't likely be used in a "sane"
> > environment)
> 
> Not an MH user, eh?  @ is symlinked to the current message you are
> replying to.  If we are going to go that far, what was the system
> that Apollos(?) used to use with environment variables?

I was thinking more of AFS.  Back in my college days we used to run AFS on
our computing center NeXTSTEP, Ultrix, DEC OSF/1, and Solaris systems.
I'm a bit fuzzy minded now, but I'm pretty sure AFS actually used the "@"
character in symbolic links to expand to a machine architecture indicator.

It is fairly handy conceptually and in practice, but I think it's somehow
incorrect to hijack the interpretation of an otherwise legitimate filename
character.

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!