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

[Udo Stenzel]

Neil Mitchell wrote:
> How about
> 
> class FilePathLike a where
>    getRealFilePath :: a -> String
> 
> Then convert readFile etc. to take a FilePathLike, rather than a filepath?

Uhm, just a minute ago the argument was that we can't change the IO
library...  Anyway, my gut says, it dislikes 'class FilePathLike'.
Gives us even less well defined semantics than a plain string.

> Windows doesn't use UTF-16, NTFS does.

I was under the impression that NT's Unicode support was conceived when
it meant UCS-2.  So it uses UCS-2 and not UTF-16, which would mean that
you could in principle encounter lone surrogate characters or something
equally nonsensical.

> FAT doesn't. And what about the
> Samba drive I have mounted under Windows?

Windows has two sets of file system related functions, one for legacy
8-bit character sets, one for Unicode.  What happens if I call the
Unicode API on a FAT system that doesn't support it?  Does it do a
half-assed version of the locale specific encoding that we deem
impossible and wrong here?

Ah, never mind, I get the strong feeling I really don't want to know all
this.  When even Windows 98 has been end-of-lifed we should rely on the
Unicode API, if anything.


Udo.
-- 
"There are three ways to make money.  You can inherit it.  You can marry
it.  You can steal it."
	-- conventional wisdom in Italy
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