Re: parse-namestring and logical pathnames

On Sep 28, 4:37 pm, Richard M Kreuter <kreu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Madhu <enom...@xxxxxxxx> writes:
Allegro is the only implementation that does NOT frob the case of
the specified pathname in ANY WAY.  I find that useful behaviour.
The fact that other implementations frob the name during translation
is the problem[1].
<snip>
[1] imo because they misweigh the imporatance of what the says about
uppercase in the implementation choices open to them.

I disagree.  The intent of the lettercase stuff in the pathnames
specification is to let you say

  (make-pathname :name "FOO" :type "LISP" :case :common)

on any Lisp and with any pathname host and get back a pathname that
maps to a filename using the standard file naming conventions of
whatever file system the file happens to be on (i.e., "FOO.LISP" on
TOPS-20, "foo.lisp" on Unix).  Failing to map uppercase in LPNs or
common case in MAKE-PATHNAME to lowercase on Unix pointlessly
reinvents the portability problems that common case and LPNs were
intended to solve.

Mentioning TOPS-20 in *any* discussion involving pathanames is beneath
contempt. :)

Besides, lowercasing in Unix is wrong as the file system is case-
sensitive.

Cheers
--
Marco

.

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