platform compatibility - tips for automation?

I am on Mac OSX, collaborating with Windows users. They do not otherwise have to work with OSX, and so commonly hard code filesep as '\', pathsep as ';', etc. To work with their code, I have to recast all such instances with the platform independent code (i.e. use filesep, pathsep functions, instead of hard codes).

This is awkward for collaboration and a tremendous waste of time. Is there some systematic way to get the differing path conventions handled automatically?

If not, why not? This surely happens a lot.