wrong directory separator

[Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>]

Hi,

Someone reported that the nnml-generate-nov-databases command
causes a terrible problem by the new variable
nnheader-directory-separator-character.  The default value for
the variable is the backslash character (i.e., ?\\) for many
non-UNIX systems; windows-nt, os/2, emx, and cygwin.

However, the reporter uses Meadow 1.15 (based on Emacs 20.7
under Win32), system-type is windows-nt, and the slash character
is used as a directory separator in Emacs Lisp expressions.

When he ran the nnml-generate-nov-databases command, a new group
"foo/bar" (not "foo.bar") was created from the existent
directory "~/Mail/foo/bar/", and such an illegal group name was
saved in the ~/Mail/active file and the ~/.newsrc.eld file.  To
make matters worse, he said that the new directory "foo_bar" was
also created for saving the .marks file there.

The root cause of the problem is the default value for the
nnheader-directory-separator-character variable.  Since I'm not
using M$ Windoze so much, I don't know whether there are any
versions of Emacsen using the backslash character in the
expand-file-name function as follows:

(let ((default-directory "."))
  (expand-file-name "bar" "foo"))
 => ".\\foo\\bar"

Any ideas?
-- 
Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>