Cannot use OSCAR if CWD contains a colon?!?

[JohnAAbbott]

Describe the bug
I want to run julia/OSCAR in a directory whose path contains a colon (inside a timestamp). using Oscar triggers a GAP error messge

Error, <str> must not contain '\' or ':' at /home/zez25zuh/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/files.gi:53 called from
Directory( GAP_getcwd(  ) ) at /home/zez25zuh/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/files.gd:554 called from
func(  ); at /home/zez25zuh/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/system.g:231 called from
<function "CallAndInstallPostRestore">( <arguments> )
 called from read-eval loop at /home/zez25zuh/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/init.g:538
ERROR: LoadError: InitError: GAP variable _JULIAINTERFACE_ERROR_BUFFER not bound
Stacktrace:
  [1] error(s::String)
    @ Base ./error.jl:35
  [2] getproperty(::GAP.GlobalsType, name::Symbol)
    @ GAP ~/.julia/packages/GAP/4O4Af/src/globals.jl:53
  [3] copy_gap_error_to_julia()
    @ GAP ~/.julia/packages/GAP/4O4Af/src/GAP.jl:77
  [4] initialize(argv::Vector{String})
    @ GAP ~/.julia/packages/GAP/4O4Af/src/GAP.jl:159
  [5] __init__()
    @ GAP ~/.julia/packages/GAP/4O4Af/src/GAP.jl:287

To Reproduce
Create a directory called directory:name (or presumably any other name containing a colon). cd into that directory then run julia using Oscar

Expected behavior
The presence of a colon in a path name should not adversely affect behaviour!

System (please complete the following information):
After switching to a directory whose name does not contain a colon Please paste the output of Oscar.versioninfo(full=true) below. If this does
not work, please paste the output of Julia's versioninfo() and your Oscar
version.

julia> Oscar.versioninfo(full=true)
OSCAR version 1.7.0-DEV - #master, a3f6b0db86 -- 2025-12-10 10:15:35 +0100
  combining:
    AbstractAlgebra.jl   v0.47.5 - #master, 811e27c103 -- 2025-12-10 13:43:02 +0000
    GAP.jl               v0.16.2
    Hecke.jl             v0.39.4 - #master, 2aee9450a4 -- 2025-12-09 19:57:26 +0100
    Nemo.jl              v0.53.0 - #master, 8e3aea0d7a -- 2025-12-01 17:26:42 +0100
    Polymake.jl          v0.13.4
    Singular.jl          v0.28.3
  building on:
    FLINT_jll                  v301.400.1+0
    GAP_jll                    v400.1500.100+1
    GAP_lib_jll                v400.1500.100+0
    Singular_jll               v404.101.503+0
    libpolymake_julia_jll      v0.14.4+0
    libsingular_julia_jll      v0.47.9+0
    polymake_jll               v400.1500.1+0
    polymake_oscarnumber_jll   v0.3.13+0
See `]st -m` for a full list of dependencies.

Julia Version 1.10.10
Commit 95f30e51f41 (2025-06-27 09:51 UTC)
Build Info:
  Official https://julialang.org/ release
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 20 × Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900 CPU @ 2.80GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-15.0.7 (ORCJIT, skylake)
Threads: 1 default, 0 interactive, 1 GC (on 20 virtual cores)
Environment:
  JULIA_LOAD_PATH = @:@v#.#:@stdlib:/environments/globalenv
  JULIA_DEPOT_PATH = /home/zez25zuh/.julia:
Official https://julialang.org/ release

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.

[thofma]

Can you reproduce it with GAP.jl only?

[benlorenz]

The same happens with just GAP as well:

julia> pwd()
".../bla:blubb"

julia> using GAP
 ┌───────┐   GAP 4.15.1 of 2025-10-18
 │  GAP  │   https://www.gap-system.org
 └───────┘   Architecture: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-julia1.12-64-kv10
 Configuration:  gmp 6.3.0, Julia GC, Julia 1.12.2, readline
 Loading the library Error, <str> must not contain '\' or ':' at /home/lorenz/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/files.gi:53 called from
Directory( GAP_getcwd(  ) ) at /home/lorenz/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/files.gd:554 called from
func(  ); at /home/lorenz/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/system.g:231 called from
<function "CallAndInstallPostRestore">( <arguments> )
 called from read-eval loop at /home/lorenz/.julia/artifacts/21532479477ddf5e931137aa39cb1e00a8edb15c/share/gap/lib/init.g:538
ERROR: InitError: GAP variable _JULIAINTERFACE_ERROR_BUFFER not bound

A similar issue was reported a while ago regarding : in the PATH variable (#1955).

I would really recommend avoiding colons in paths.
It is a path separator in posix thus cannot be used in PATH or LOAD_PATH, see also JuliaLang/julia#57092.

[JohnAAbbott]

I would really recommend avoiding colons in paths. It is a path separator in posix...

As they say: What has that go to do with the price of fish?

Why should Oscar/GAP care about the full path name of my current working directory? I have no intention of putting the directory name in my shell PATH variable. It does not seem unreasonable to want to put a time-stamp into a directory name. Yes, of course I can "work around" the bug/problem, but I shouldn't have to. I do not recall ever encountering a program that gave an error because of the full path name of the CWD.

[fingolfin]

See gap-system/gap#6175 -- it will be fixed in a future GAP release.

But really, just rename your directory.

Of course you can insist that it is your good right to put in colons, spaces, backslashes, slashes, emoji and what not in your paths, and if it works, I congratulate you -- but I will not take any responsibility if this leads to e.g. data loss (which definitely has happened in the past for people when using colons or spaces in filenames)

[JohnAAbbott]

Thanks! Good to know that it will (eventually) be fixed. Of course, I did work around the problem (by changing my script to generate directory names without time-stamps)... once I'd finally understood what the problem was!