Hi Jonah,
Thank you for your very useful replies. You mustn't take my comments
personally (please dont take these personally either).
My observation that it was "an odd way to do things" was a mild way of
implying that there is a slightly better way of doing things that
doesn't require a PhD in the tool used.
Any tool responding:
cannot find -l/home/fred/workspace/CgiGetD/libmysqlclient.a
when that pathname exists and is readable, clearly "could do better".
Having in the past developed tools that did something similar I found
the most intuitive approach (i.e. the one that worked best for the
"non-expert") is to apply the following logic:
1) Did the user supply a known suffix - if so use it verbatim.
2) Did the user (appear to) supply a known prefix - if so (try to) use
it verbatim.
3) Try known suffixes.
4) Try the default prefix.
5) Check in each case that the file has the appropriate attributes, e.g.
contains the expected content.
6) If a non-verbatim filename is used, announce the filename actually
used in case the user made a mistake and something matched coincidentally.
It's a good rule generally, whether you are a computer program or a
human, to:
1) Check your assumptions.
2) Try doing exactly what you have been told in case that is what is
required.
Again many thanks for your useful and informative replies.
Regards,
Jan