Re: pathname-directory, Hyperspec violation

At 08:57 AM 2/25/03 +0000, SmallHairyTroll <[email protected]> wrote:
>I am trying to pass a filename and directoryname string to the
>function (make-pathname) like so...
>
>(setf path (make-pathname
>         :device "C"
>         :directory '("\\test_directory")
>         :name "test_file.txt"))
>
>... ccl returns ...
>
>#P"C:test_file.txt"
>
>... what happened to the directoryname ? I'm doing something wrong
>but what?

If you look at the components of the structure returned, you will see
that the "\\test_directory" string is part of the :directory slot.

But it doesn't get printed out.  I think that's because the printer assumes
the first element of the :directory slot should be :absolute or :relative,
which is a reasonable assumption.

I would venture that there are a fair number of problems with pathnames,
e.g., this is a violation of the Hyperspec, related to the above:

(setf path (make-pathname
         :device "C"
         :directory '(:absolute "test_directory")
         :name "test_file.txt"))
#P"C:\test_directory\test_file.txt"
(setf path (make-pathname
         :device "C"
         :directory "test_directory"
         :name "test_file.txt"))
;;; An error occurred in function CONVERT-PATHNAME-TO-NAMESTRING:
;;; Error: Not a list: test_directory
;;; Entering Corman Lisp debug loop.
;;; Use :C followed by an option to exit. Type :HELP for help.
;;; Restart options:
;;; 1   Abort to top level.

because the MAKE-PATHNAME entry in the Hyperspec says that

"If the directory is a string, it should be the name of a
top level directory, and should not contain any punctuation
characters; that is, specifying a string, str, is equivalent
to specifying the list (:absolute str)."

Also, it says that the directory component is

'a valid pathname directory'

and the entry for 'valid pathname directory' says that it is

"string, a list of strings, nil, :wild, :unspecific, or some
other object defined by the implementation to be a
valid directory component."

So MAKE-PATHNAME must clearly accept a string as the argument
for the :DIRECTORY keyword, but it is not.  And it also certainly
should accept a list of one string and treat it as a string.
OTOH, your example has 'punctuation' in it so it could be
considered erroneous, and all bets are off at that point.