[Haskell] Re: System.FilePath survey

[Lemmih]

On 2/6/06, Simon Marlow <simonmarhaskell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Isaac Jones wrote:
>
> > 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?
>
> The reason we can't just go right ahead and do The Right Thing (i.e.
> introduce a new ADT for FilePaths) is because it touches so much other
> stuff, including stuff that also needs revising, so it doesn't feel
> right to just fix the FilePath library.
>
> Experience with GHC releases has left me with the opinion that it's
> better to group breaking changes together rather than dribble them out -
> people only have to modify their code once, and conditional compilation
> gets fewer cases.
>
> So I'm of the opinion that introducing an ADT for FilePaths is something
> that should wait until the I/O library is revised.  In the meantime, we
> should include a String-based Data.FilePath library in Haskell'.  It's
> not as elegant, but it's terribly practical, and that's one goal of
> Haskell'.
>
> As a first step, can someone package up Data.FilePath as a Cabal package
> so that at least we can all start using the same one?

Already done.
Darcs repository: http://scannedinavian.com/~lemmih/FilePath/
Tarball: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/FilePath-0.1.0.tgz

--
Friendly,
  Lemmih