An article on the web refers to the location of the Edge user profile as
C:\\Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Edge\\User
Data\\Default

Why are there two slashes in each place when in Mayberry, they use only
one?

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On 5/30/25 5:37 PM, micky wrote:

An article on the web refers to the location of the Edge user profile as
C:\\Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Edge\\User Data\\Default

Why are there two slashes in each place when in Mayberry, they use only
one?

Linux own the web. Windows uses back slashed. Linux uses
forward slashes. To get a backslash in Linux you need to
"escape" the backup slash.

And as it so happens, the escape character in Linux is a
backslash, so you get two backslashes to get one.

$ echo "\"

^C (it escaped the end of line character)

$ echo "\\"
\

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In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 30 May 2025 22:10:25 -0400,
"...winston" <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

micky wrote:

An article on the web refers to the location of the Edge user profile as
C:\\Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Edge\\User
Data\\Default

Why are there two slashes in each place when in Mayberry, they use only
one?

Open Edge
Enter this string in the address bar then press the Enter key

edge://version/

Scroll down to Profile path
Note: no double slash

Not everything found on the web(especially since your link to the
'article on the web' was omitted in the original post query) is accurate.
- in fact a multitude of other articles provide the correct path(and
consistent with the edge://version details.

I didn't post links and maybe I should have, but I found similar
statements for both edge and chrome (under windows, of course, not
linux) so I figured it was something moderately common that people would
be acquainted with. Maybe someone who is will post?

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On Sat, 5/31/2025 12:07 AM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 30 May 2025 22:10:25 -0400,
"...winston" <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

micky wrote:

An article on the web refers to the location of the Edge user profile as >>> C:\\Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Edge\\User
Data\\Default

Why are there two slashes in each place when in Mayberry, they use only
one?

Open Edge
Enter this string in the address bar then press the Enter key

edge://version/

Scroll down to Profile path
Note: no double slash

Not everything found on the web(especially since your link to the
'article on the web' was omitted in the original post query) is accurate.
- in fact a multitude of other articles provide the correct path(and
consistent with the edge://version details.

I didn't post links and maybe I should have, but I found similar
statements for both edge and chrome (under windows, of course, not
linux) so I figured it was something moderately common that people would
be acquainted with. Maybe someone who is will post?

The double-slash is an escape sequence in some ecosystems. The formation of
the web page may tempt the writer to resort to tricks like that to insulate
the web page content from his own ecosystem interpretation.

Either the "input box" in File Explorer is a shell instance, or it isn't.
No purpose is served in having it work half way. If I use %userprofile%,
that evaluates the $userprofile in ENV (the process environment table perhaps), and that seems to work in File Explorer. That's a shell behavior.

Some of the File Explorer processing, is looking for file sharing URI. So
the box also seems to have shades of web browser URI processing. https://
or ftp:// are URIs. \\wallace\shared is a file sharing reference. The two back slashes in that case, happen to be part of the specific URI processing.

So when I see articles like this, I remain unconvinced. It would appear C:\\Users is not valid when I try it. If I hadn't tested it, I would have
been telling you that it works. It does not seem to.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15969608/what-is-the-difference-between-and-in-file-path

I ran a Procmon trace, and that was unhelpful. File Explorer seems to be comparing the
input string to a series of previously typed input strings. Which might be useful
if it was doing tab-completion. The activity doesn't look convincing
though when I've hit return, signaling the end of input as far as I
am concerned and the tool is supposed to process the input string
at that point and stop farting around. It then signals that it
can't find the string with the double-backslashes.

I don't have a convincing answer for you. The behavior is not consistent
or cohesive the way some escape sequence explanations are.

Paul

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On 5/30/25 11:06 PM, Paul wrote:

The double-slash is an escape sequence in some ecosystems. The formation of the web page may tempt the writer to resort to tricks like that to insulate the web page content from his own ecosystem interpretation.

Hi Paul,

I program in Raku (Perl6). Raku's IO functions are
toast with UNC file names/paths.

Here is an example of what I am trying to do:

RotateArchives: renaming directory \\192.168.240.10\oldserver\Backup\MyDocsBackup\backup6
to \\192.168.240.10\oldserver\Backup\MyDocsBackup\backup4

This is what Raku screwed up on the double back slashes:

'C:\192.168.240.10\oldserver\Backup\MyDocsBackup\backup6'
to 'C:\192.168.240.10\oldserver\Backup\MyDocsBackup\backup4':
Failed to rename file: no such file or directory

Raku translated \\ as C:\

Powershell and Git's bash calls do not have this problem.
(I have to install Git to load raku libraries with zef.)

I wrote a module to make calls to powershell to
get around the problem. You helped me with a bunch
of them. Thank you.

It would have been nice if DOS had used UNIX's
convention from the beginning.

-T

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