From: Jeff Dalton
Subject: Re: *default-pathname-defaults* ?
Date:
Message-ID: <8819@skye.ed.ac.uk>
In article <····················@zaphod.lanl.gov> ······@zaphod.lanl.gov (Skip Egdorf) writes:
>Lucid and Allegro seem to use *default-pathname-defaults* for
>just about all file operations. This means that setting it with
>a (setf *default-pathname-defaults* (pathname ...)) works
>just about like a Unix chdir. All file operations then use
>this as the default pathname.
What happens if the default is /a/b/c/ and I use the name d/e?
Do I get /a/b/c/d/e or d/e or what?
I ought to get /a/b/c/d/e, because (pathname-directory "d/e")
should be (:relative "d"), but this is not what happens in all
Lisps.
In many cases, strings are more portable than pathnames if
you know the OS. For instance, I know I can concatenate
/a/b/c/ and d/e to get what I want; merge-pathnames is less
reliable. Unfortunately.
-- jd