[linux-cifs-client] Re: POSIX pathnames and the '\' character

[Steve French]

> Second would be to infer the path seperator from the first char after the share name
I think that this is what everyone could agree on ...

A DFS path with mixed slash usage ie which began with a forward slash (after \server\share) is detectable and unlikely to be generated by legacy clients or servers.

I do not believe that any current client could request a DFS referral using the path of form
     \server\share/directory/subdirectory
I also do not believe that any server exists which could construct DFS referral responses with a path of the form
	\server\share/directory/subdirectory

If a DFS client supported posix paths, such a DFS client could easily recognize the need to convert \ to / in pathnames by noting the first char after the share name in the DFS referral response which was sent by a server on a share which claimed to be POSIX.

Based on the lack of bugs reported to Samba server in the non-DFS case (the Linux cifs client could send such paths, but the Samba server has never supported '\' in a path component although it does support : and * and ? for posix clients) - in practice such paths seem to be very rare.