Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH 3/4] Remove ##sys#expand-home-path.

[Alaric Snell-Pym]

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On 03/15/2013 09:01 AM, Peter Bex wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 09:36:01AM +0100, Christian Kellermann wrote:
>> * Florian Zumbiehl <address@hidden> [130315 07:58]:
>>> Remove ##sys#expand-home-path as shell expansion has no place in a 
>>> filesystem
>>> API.
>>
>> I'd rather prefer a "no-shell-expansion" feature than breaking the
>> current behaviour. This way programmers can choose when they need
>> a "dumb" implementation (because the name is made up by user input)
>> or whether the old behaviour should work for them.
>
> A saner way of doing it is to have an explicit shell expansion procedure
> through which you can pass the path string.  That way, we achieve clean
> separation of functionality.
>
>> Ripping it out like this is not an option.
>
> I agree we can't immediately do it, but we should strive towards a clean,
> safe API in the long run.  Just keeping it around is not an option either.
> Adding more parameters or options is ugly, IMHO.

I agree with Peter here.

Sure, it'll be handy to have a procedure that does shell-style expansion
on a path.

But it's broken to have it happen by default; in Ugarit I've obtained a
list of filenames from "(directory <path> #t)" and I proceed to
with-input-from-file each of the returned filenames. Seems sensible,
right? Except now I hear that it will break if people have filenames
starting with ~ or $...

This smacks of the kind of thing PHP does! It certainly shouldn't happen
by default, and ending up decorating all our new code with a standard
stanza of "no-<broken feature>" is not something we really want to have
to be teaching new users.

So, how can we migrate to explicit shell expansion? A depreciation
phase, so everyone gets a chance to make their code call the expander?

> Cheers,
> Peter

ABS

- --
Alaric Snell-Pym
http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
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