Joel, on your specific little ad_context_bar example, there's at least
one much easier "right way" to do it:
You're saying that the default separator character is hard-coded into
the proc. Ok, simply change that to instead read the default from the
AOLserver config file, defaulting to the current hard-coded character
if the parameter is not defined at all in the config file. Then
define whatever character you want in your own config file. There,
you're done, it was really easy, and your change should also be
suitable for contributing back to the toolkit.