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From: tim@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: PARSE-NAMESTRING use in CL
Message-ID: <TIM.91Apr29103808@kahlo.cstr.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 29 Apr 91 10:38:08 GMT
Sender: news@aipna.ed.ac.uk
Distribution: comp
Organization: CSTR, University of Edinburgh
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[I'm asking this without having exhaustively read the part of either
CLtL on file system interface, so forgive stupidity.]

Most of the CL functions & macros which look at files take either a
pathname or a string as an argument to specify the file.  The function
PARSE-NAMESTRING takes such a string and converts it to a pathname.

Question: should the other file functions use PARSE-NAMESTRING to get
pathnames? 

The reason I would like this is that I can then modify this in some
way and it will affect all file operations so long as I use stringy
file names.  In particular I can make it substitute environment vars
(HOME &c) on Unix machines.  On the other hand, perhaps I can do all
this with logical pathnames?

Experiment indicates that Allegro CL / Sun4 does do this, Kyoto CL /
Sun4 does not.

--tim