2010/7/26 Laurent <[email protected]>: > > > On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 14:43, Matthew Flatt <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> At Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:29:57 +0200, Laurent wrote: >> > The reader cannot read #<path:....> forms (is this the right term?). >> > When the interaction window is in constructor mode, for (build-path "a" >> > "b"), it writes #<path:a/b>, but this cannot be read back. >> > >> > First question: would it be possible to make the reader read paths? >> >> The reason that paths are not `read'able is that's there is not a >> single right choice for how to marshal paths: >> >> * Sometimes you want the string form of a path, which may be encoded >> in different ways on different platforms (e.g., using different >> locales) to keep the string form the same. >> >> * Sometimes you want the bytes form of a path, because the path isn't >> going to be used on multiple systems, and converting to a string >> form may lose information (e.g., because it's not a UTF-8 encoding). >> >> Since there was no right answer, we decided not to pick either of them. >> The lack of a `read'able form is a weak hint to programmers that they >> need to look closely at the question. > > Thanks, I understand. > Maybe we could distinguish between `read'able and un`read'able paths?
But there are no (guaranteed to be) readable paths because the underlying filesystem may use a bizarro encoding. (I think you're unlikely to run into problems with (7-bit) ascii paths, but I don't think that it is guaranteed.) Robby _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
