On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 03:36:13AM +0100, Neil Mitchell wrote:
pathSeparator :: Char The character that seperates directories. So what do I do with this? If I need it, it seems like the module has failed. Hopefully no one will ever use it. Its part of the low level functions that the FilePath module builds on. However, pragmatically, someone somewhere will have a use for it, and the second they do they'll just write '/', and at that point we've lost.
I'd just point out that I'm not aware of an operating system that GHC runs on that doesn't accept '/' as a path separator. It may be that you could fine an OS where you could compile with jhc or run with hugs that doesn't use '/' (e.g. MacOS 9), but support for MacOS 9 at this stage I wouldn't consider a high priority. Since noone ought to need the path separator, and since they can currently assume '/' without loss of portability, it seems like adding in an extra function to protect us from the introduction of an operating system some time in the future that doesn't allow '/' as a path separator is a bit much. Of course, I may be wrong. Does windows disallow mixing of '/' and '\\' as path separators? In darcs we always just use '/' as all the path separators, and it works fine... -- David Roundy