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This is the illogical-pathnames Reference Manual, version 1.0.1, generated automatically by Declt version 3.0 "Montgomery Scott" on Mon Apr 19 16:28:10 2021 GMT+0.
| • Introduction | What illogical-pathnames is all about | |
| • Systems | The systems documentation | |
| • Files | The files documentation | |
| • Packages | The packages documentation | |
| • Definitions | The symbols documentation | |
| • Indexes | Concepts, functions, variables and data types |
ILLOGICAL PATHNAMES
===================
By Robert Smith
Purpose
-------
The purpose of this library is to allow one to specify pathnames in
source files whose syntax mostly doesn't depend on a physical path
location. To put it simply, one can write
#P(:HOME (".emacs.d") "foo.el")
instead of
#P"/home/me/.emacs.d/foo.el".
Somewhere, :HOME---a so-called "illogical host"---has to be
specified. This is done by associating it with a directory via the
macro DEFINE-ILLOGICAL-HOST. They can be redefined, which won't affect
evaluated uses of #P(...) syntax.
The former syntax isn't actually an "illogical pathname"; it evaluates
to a physical pathname. (See the example below and the FAQ.) However,
it does involve objects of the type ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME under the hood.
Using illogical pathnames allows one to easily write code whose
pathnames are relative to a few known base directories. When the
program is moved, or perhaps an executable is created, one only has to
redefine the set of illogical hosts. Using the power of
*LOAD-TRUENAME* and others, one can make mostly portable applications
that don't depend on physical filesystem location at all.
Name
----
Before this library, I attempted to solve the same problem by defining
logical hosts with wildcard translations. This worked relatively well
with Clozure CL, due to their more flexible implementation of logical
pathnames. However, more ANSI compliant systems (with respect to
logical pathnames) didn't work with the same code. As such, in my
mind, I made "logical pathnames that solve the 95% case" and called
them "illogical pathnames", a play on the fact that they were supposed
to be "logical logical pathnames". (A double positive makes a
negative, right?)
Despite the name and the reasoning behind the name, these aren't a
replacement for logical pathnames and are not "better" than logical
pathnames; they just solve a different problem than that which logical
hosts solve on modern machines.
Example
-------
Note that normal pathname syntax isn't changed.
> #P"/foo/bar"
#P"/foo/bar"
Let's define an illogical host that points to my home directory.
> (ipath:define-illogical-host :home "/home/me/")
:HOME
Let's use the extended pathname syntax to refer to a file in my home
directory.
> #P(:home ("Scratch") "new.txt")
#P"/home/me/Scratch/new.txt"
We see that #P(...) isn't truly a literal for an illogical
pathname. It returned a physical pathname. What does #P(...) really
expand into then?
> '#P(:home ("Scratch") "new.txt")
(ILLOGICAL-PATHNAMES:TRANSLATE-ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME
#S(ILLOGICAL-PATHNAMES:ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME
:HOST :HOME
:DIRECTORY ("Scratch")
:NAME "new"
:TYPE "txt"))
Just an unevaluated translation of an illogical pathname object.
Let's define another illogical host referring to my scratch space
directory in my home directory.
> (ipath:define-illogical-host :scratch #P(:home ("Scratch")))
:SCRATCH
Let's open a new file and write to it in my scratch space.
> (with-open-file (s #P(:scratch nil "test.txt") :direction ':output
:if-does-not-exist ':create)
(write-string "testing, 1 2 3" s))
"testing, 1 2 3"
And finally, let's read it back.
> (with-open-file (s #P(:scratch nil "test.txt") :direction ':input)
(read-line s))
"testing, 1 2 3"
T
That is basically it.
Frequently Asked Questions
--------------------------
Q. Why doesn't #P(...) specify a literal illogical pathname object?
This was a pragmatic choice. If Common Lisp had a generic function
called, say, TRANSLATE-TO-PATHNAME which all relevant Common Lisp
functions knew about, we could indeed use illogical pathname objects
by creating a method of that generic function. However, since we don't
have that functionality, yet we want to relatively transparently be
able to specify illogical pathnames in the places they're used, we do
the translation within the expansion of #P(...).
Q. My system needs to be bootstrapped, and I can't rely on Quicklisp
or ASDF, but I want to use illogical pathnames.
No problem. The file "illogical-pathnames.lisp" is self-contained. You
can load it as-is.
Q. ANSI logical pathnames can solve this problem. I tried it and
it works fine!
The ANSI spec requires that strings in logical pathnames must be uppercase,
and the system should convert them to uppercase when pathnames are created:
"Logical pathname words are restricted to non-case-sensitive letters,
digits, and hyphens to avoid creating problems with real file systems
that support limited character sets for file naming. (If logical pathnames
were case-sensitive, it would be very difficult to map them into a file
system that is not sensitive to case in its file names.)"
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node213.html
The phrase in parentheses above is precisely the opposite of the truth.
A fully ANSI-conforming logical pathname implementation cannot generally
be used on a case-sensitive file system such as that typically used in Linux
or Unix.
If you are not seeing this problem with your CL implementation, it is either because
you are using a case-insensitive file system like MacOSX, or because
your implementation (e.g., Clozure CL or Franz) sanely nixed the ANSI idea
of logical pathnames and made them case-preserving.
Unfortunately, that is not ANSI conforming.
Q. Why didn't you just make a DEFINE-* macro and a function?
Pathnames need to be convenient, and specifying functions in full is
not syntactically convenient. If one doesn't like the #P syntax, they
may opt to create ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME objects and call
TRANSLATE-ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME at will.
> (ipath:define-illogical-host :home "/Users/me/")
:HOME
> (ipath:make-illogical-pathname
:host ':home
:directory '("foo" "bar")
:name "test"
:type "txt")
#S(ILLOGICAL-PATHNAMES:ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME :HOST :HOME :DIRECTORY ("foo" "bar") :NAME "test" :TYPE "txt")
> (ipath:translate-illogical-pathname *)
#P"/Users/me/foo/bar/test.txt"
Next: Files, Previous: Introduction, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
The main system appears first, followed by any subsystem dependency.
| • The illogical-pathnames system |
Robert Smith <quad@symbo1ics.com>
BSD 3-clause (See illogical-pathnames.lisp)
Mostly filesystem-position-independent pathnames.
1.0.1
illogical-pathnames.asd (file)
Files are sorted by type and then listed depth-first from the systems components trees.
| • Lisp files | ||
| • Static files |
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| • The illogical-pathnames.asd file | ||
| • The illogical-pathnames/illogical-pathnames.lisp file |
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illogical-pathnames.asd
illogical-pathnames (system)
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readme.txt (file)
illogical-pathnames (system)
illogical-pathnames.lisp
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| • The illogical-pathnames/readme.txt file |
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illogical-pathnames (system)
README.txt
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Packages are listed by definition order.
| • The illogical-pathnames package |
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
ipath
common-lisp
Definitions are sorted by export status, category, package, and then by lexicographic order.
| • Exported definitions | ||
| • Internal definitions |
Next: Internal definitions, Previous: Definitions, Up: Definitions [Contents][Index]
| • Exported macros | ||
| • Exported functions | ||
| • Exported structures | ||
| • Exported types |
Next: Exported functions, Previous: Exported definitions, Up: Exported definitions [Contents][Index]
Define the illogical host HOST to the absolute directory DIRECTORY.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
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Disable illogical pathname syntax.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Enable illogical pathname syntax.
#P"..." ; traditional pathname syntax
#P(<illogical-host> (<directory name>*) <filename>?)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Translate the illogical host ILLOGICAL-HOST to its defined absolute directory.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
(setf illogical-host-translation) (function)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-host-translation (function)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Translate the illogical pathname ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME to its equivalent absolute pathname.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
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illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
structure-object (structure)
make-load-form (method)
illogical-pathname-host (function)
(setf illogical-pathname-host) (function)
illogical-pathname-directory (function)
(setf illogical-pathname-directory) (function)
illogical-pathname-name (function)
(setf illogical-pathname-name) (function)
illogical-pathname-type (function)
(setf illogical-pathname-type) (function)
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The type of an illogical host object.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
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| • Internal special variables | ||
| • Internal functions |
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illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Association between ILLOGICAL-HOSTs and their pathname translation.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
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Helper function for DIRECTORY-PATHNAME-P which checks whether VALUE is neither NIL nor the keyword :UNSPECIFIC.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Returns NIL if PATHSPEC (a pathname designator) does not designate a directory, PATHSPEC otherwise. It is irrelevant whether file or directory designated by PATHSPEC does actually exist.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Reader for illogical pathnames. Returns an illogical pathname.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Convert the illogical pathname ILLOGICAL-PATHNAME to its representative relative pathname.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Returns true if A is an absolute pathname.
This simply tests if A’s directory list starts with :ABSOLUTE
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
Converts the non-wild pathname designator PATHSPEC to file form.
illogical-pathnames.lisp (file)
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| • Function index | ||
| • Variable index | ||
| • Data type index |
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