filepath

[Ian Lynagh]

Hi Neil,

I'm having some problems using filepath in GHC. I think some of these we
might have discussed before, but if so I've forgotten what the
conclusion was, if any, and I can't see the answers in the docs.


The first is this:
    Prelude System.FilePath> "." </> "foo"
    "./foo"
which means we get things like
    [2 of 2] Compiling GHC.Foo          ( ./GHC/Foo.hs, ./GHC/Foo.o )
rather than
    [2 of 2] Compiling GHC.Foo          ( GHC/Foo.hs, GHC/Foo.o )
Is there a reason the result shouldn't be "foo"?


Possibly relatedly, the current directory seems to be "" rather than
".". This turns up in at least a couple of areas:
    Prelude System.FilePath> normalise "."
    ""
    Prelude System.FilePath> splitFileName "foo"
    ("","foo")
I expected "." and "./" respectively, rather than the ""s. This causes
problems when giving arguments to library functions or programs, which
generally want "." or "./" rather than "", and if you are displaying a
directory to the user then you again probably don't want to print "".
As an example, I had a problem where GHC was running "gcc -I foo" rather
than "gcc -I. foo".


This looks like a straightforward bug to me:
    Prelude System.FilePath> normalise "./"
    "/"


I'm not convinced by
    Prelude System.FilePath> isValid ""
    True
I don't think I could "create a file like it".


Finally, could splitSearchPath please take an extra argument, a list of
FilePaths, to be appended to the result if it ends with a : or ; (as
appropriate)?


Thanks
Ian