System.FilePath propsal (Was: Cabal feedback notes)

[Krasimir Angelov]

normalizeCase is an equivalen of normcase from
OS.Path. I also wondered whether this function is
useful at all but decided to add it for completeness. 
I tend to agree to remove it.

Cheers,
  Krasimir

--- Wolfgang Thaller <wolfgang.thaller at gmx.net> wrote:

> > -- | Normalize the case of a file path. On Unix,
> this returns the path 
> > unchanged;
> > -- on case-insensitive filesystems, it converts
> the path to lowercase. 
> > -- On Windows, it also converts forward slashes to
> backward slashes.
> > normalizeCase :: FilePath -> FilePath
> 
> I'm afraid I don't like this function. The
> case-insensitive file 
> systems used on Windows and Mac OS X by default are
> _case-preserving_ 
> [well, FAT32 is almost case-preserving], so if you
> use normalizeCase in 
> any other situation than normalizeCase a ==
> normalizeCase b, then it'll 
> probably be wrong.
> 
> Also, it has been discussed before that Mac OS X,
> Linux, and probably 
> even Windows support mounting both case-sensitive
> and case-insensitive 
> file systems. So whether a file name should be case
> sensitive really 
> depends on where a file is.
> So maybe we need
> 
> normalizeCase :: FilePath -> IO FilePath
> 
> ... where the FilePath must refer to an existing
> file or directory. 
> That's definitely not a simple path utility function
> any more.
> 
> Are there enough situations where the simple but not
> quite correct pure 
> normalizeCase function would be The Right Thing (or
> at least 
> Sufficiently Close To The Right Thing)?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Wolfgang
> 
> 



		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail