[Haskell-cafe] RE: ANN: System.FilePath 0.9

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

> So what's better?
>
> - use an ADT (correct and portable by construction), convert to String
>   when calling the IO library
>
> - fumble with Strings, use an unholy mix of specialized and general
>   functions, trip over a corner case

Or provide an ADT, demand people marshal to and from this ADT and not
just cheat and use the string directly? Unfortunately people are lazy,
I am one of them...


> We should just wrap the old API, filePathToString any parameters and
> liftIO the function while we're at it.

How about

class FilePathLike a where
    getRealFilePath :: a -> String

Then convert readFile etc. to take a FilePathLike, rather than a filepath?

I'd be happy with that, and then you can write an ADT and pin down all
the exact details, and the end user can then pick whatever they want
to use.

> - declare that Unix uses Unicode too, take the appropriate conversion
>   from the locale
Unfortunately this is wrong, and will give the wrong answers.

> - parameterize the FilePath ADT on the character type, you get (FilePath
>   Word16) on Windows (which uses UCS-2, not UCS-4 and not UTF-16) and
>   (FilePath Word8) on Unix; provide conversions from/to (FilePath
>   String).
Windows doesn't use UTF-16, NTFS does. FAT doesn't. And what about the
Samba drive I have mounted under Windows?


Thanks

Neil