Hi Juanjo,
On 13/10/2011, at 6:48 PM, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Mark Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have two issues with respect to the merging of DELETE-FILE and
> RMDIR:
>
> 1. For physical pathnames it seems straightforward, but I do
> wonder if there are any unexpected gotchas when using logical
> pathnames.
>
> Understood, but here the user must understand that logical pathnames are not
> physical objects. An invalid pathname translation also has problems with
> delete-files, as it would do one that changes a file into a directory and
> viceversa.
>
> 2. DELETE-FILE is defined by the CLHS. People who use ECL without
> reading too much of the CLHS may expect DELETE-FILE to behave
> similarly across implementations. For example, it was a huge shock to
> me that in CLISP, PROBE-FILE signals an error when called with a
> pathname that represents a directory.
>
> This is a different field. So far no implementation has restrained from
> having unspecified behavior because ECL users might be confused, and this
> includes incorrect LOOP forms, but this is not the case. As Waldek pointed
> out, the key point is the definition of file
> (http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/26_glo_f.htm#file), which talks about a named entry
> in the file system. If ECL already considers directories to be valid files
> for PROBE-FILE, then it is inconsistent in not allowing to delete them, and
> failing to rename them for some fo the syntaxes.
I agree that DELETE-FILE should be able to delete directories. I was merely
raising concerns with the change. The fact that ENSURE-DIRECTORIES-EXIST has no
ENSURE-DIRECTORIES-DO-NOT-EXIST suggests to me that DELETE-FILE was intended
all along to have that capability anyhow. I probably should have stated this in
my first email.
Thanks for the link to the term file. It is interesting that the "Arguments and
Values" section for PROBE-FILE and DELETE-FILE specify pathname designator [1]
rather than file.
This gives the impression that you could delete/probe a pathname host or
device. It is not until the description do you see any mention of the term
file. I guess now it is down to what you consider to be "in" a file system.
Ah, the fun.
Mark
[1]
http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/26_glo_p.htm#pathname_designator
This excursion has lead to the discovery of ENOUGH-NAMESTRING, something I have
always done by hand. Thank you!
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