Re: [clisp-list] RFC: operating on filenames which look wild

[Sam S. <sd...@gn...>]

Hi Bruno,

> * Bruno Haible <oe...@py...t> [2011-05-04 00:23:32 +0200]:
>
>> "foo*" is a valid (although uncommon) pathname on most modern OSes but
>> it cannot be handled by clisp easily.
>> proposal: user variable *accept-wild-pathname* which will treat wild
>> pathname as non-wild in OPEN, DELETE-FILE et al.:
>
> Very nice!

thanks.
what do you think about the alternative (and much more complex) proposal
if allowing users to escape wildcards?

>> [6]> (let ((*accept-wild-pathname* t)) (delete-file "foo*"))
>> #P"/home2/sds/src/clisp/current/build-g/foo*"
>
> Let's go even one step further:
>
> (let ((*accept-wild-pathname* t)) (wild-pathname-p (pathname "foo*"))) => NIL

Doesn't look right to me.

> Should this variable influence the parsing of pathnames or their
> interpretations in functions such as OPEN, DELETE-FILE, etc.?
> It needs to influence both, because
>    (pathname "foo*") => #S(PATHNAME :NAME "foo*")
>    (pathname "foo.x*") => #S(PATHNAME :NAME "foo" :TYPE "x*")
> regardless whether *accept-wild-pathname* is true.

How should it influence parsing?  Why?
I think that if we want to touch parsing we might as well implement
wildcard escaping...

>> a better name for the variable?
> Maybe *interpret-wildcards*, with default value t?

Sounds good.

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on CentOS release 5.6 (Final) X 11.0.60900031
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