Re: Clisp 1997-05-29 cygwin-beta question

[Bruno Haible <haible@ilog.fr>]

Richard Tietjen <rtietjen@kale.connix.com> writes:
> Hi, I've obtained the Win-Beta version of clisp-1997-05-29.  It
> requires cygwin.dll. Now when I run clisp thusly:
> 
> d:\win32app\clisp-1997-05-29\base\lisp -M \
>      //d/win32app/clisp-1997-05-29/base/lispinit.mem 
> 
> I get an error message:
> 
> *** - |PARSE-NAMESTRING|: syntax error in filename "H:\\/" at position 1
> 
> I haven't seen anything that tells me what clisp is trying to do.

It's trying to parse the HOME environment variable. To quote from the
README/INSTALL file:

  Known problems with CLISP on Cygwin32:
 
  - CLISP understands the UNC pathname syntax "//drive/path/filename" for
    "drive:\path\file". The latter syntax is *not* understood.
  ...

  - The HOME environment variable must be a valid pathname according to the
    restrictions above.

Btw, there are new win32 binaries on ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de.
However, the decision between the cygwin32 and the native win32 ports
of clisp is difficult: The cygwin32 port has Unixy pathname syntax and
slow directory accesses, but has the readline library built-in. The
native win32 port is fine and snappy, even with generational GC, but
lacks readline.

                           Bruno