[Tutor] Files and file attributes

[Tim Peters]

[attribution lost]
> f = open("c:/tmp/testfile","r+")
>
> Windows is perfectly ok with forward slashes. They keep it a
> bit of a secret though...

[Ibraheem Umaru-Mohammed]
> is this a "Windows" feature or a Python induced platform specific
> translation?

Python never does any translation of path strings on any platform, unless
you explicitly invoke functions like os.path.normpath().  All of the native
Windows API calls, and all the C libraries under Windows, accept forward or
backward slashes (or mixtures).  The DOS shell (command.com on Win9X,
cmd.exe on NT/2000) is what insists on backslashes, becase it uses forward
slashes to mark command arguments.  Note, though, that Python's os.system()
passes its argument to a newly-created DOS shell on Windows, so pathnames in
that do need to use backslashes.

consistency-is-overrated<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim