[Haskell] System.FilePath survey

[Isaac Jones]

Wolfgang Jeltsch <wolfgang at jeltsch.net> writes:

> Am Freitag, 3. Februar 2006 12:03 schrieb Krasimir Angelov:
>> [...]
>
>>     * Will you be happy with a library that represents the file path
>> as String? The opposite is to use ADT for it. The disadvantage is that
>> with the current IO library we should convert from ADT to String and
>> back again each time when we have to do any IO. The ADT may have
>> advantages for the internal library implementation.
>
> I would very much prefer an ADT.  An ADT would describe the actual logical 
> structure of a file path and this is something we should always try to 
> achieve.

Has anyone yet volunteered to do the hard work of defining an ADT and
made a proposal for how it should interact w/ the System.IO functions?

I think that lacking a FilePath module is a serious problem that is
holding haskell back.  Lots of languages use String for filepath, like
Python, which is hugely popular for these uses, but has nothing on
Haskell, IMO, except this single library.  

Lots of people have written home-grown FilePath modules.  How long can
we wait for an implementation to appear?

peace,

  isaac