std.path.getName(): Screwy by design?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:01:49 -0500, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:

> "Lars T. Kyllingstad" <public at kyllingen.NOSPAMnet> wrote in message
> news:ikis59$14ci$3 at digitalmars.com...
>> On Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:10:58 +0100, Jens Mueller wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't know whether this is useful but why not look at what is already
>>> there. Linux has a command called basename. For removing the extension
>>> it is a bit useless. Because you need to provide the extension as a
>>> second argument in that case. But maybe it is like this for a good
>>> reason. There is also dirname.
>>
>> I have used Linux's basename and dirname commands as the model for my
>> versions.  basename takes a suffix argument because Linux formally
>> doesn't have the notion of a file extension.  A dot is a part of the  
>> name
>> just like any other character.
>>
>
> People don't always realize it, but Windows really is the same way. It's
> really only the user-level applications like Explorer that ever care  
> about
> "extension", and even then the extension is always just "everything after
> the last dot in the filename". Anything beyond that is merely tradition  
> and
> convention. The only real difference is that windows has no standard
> mechanism for looking at the content of the file to help determine its  
> type.

Didn't the FAT16 filesystem require something in the name portion of the  
8.3 filename?

Note, special care will need to be taken with the special directories '.'  
and '..' to avoid some weird bugs.

-Steve