Isaac Jones
* Some languages have a means of building paths in a portable way. It would be nice if we had access a file separator (like "/" in unix and "\" in windows).
If this is really necessary, I'd prefer it if it was taken care of "under the hood". FilePath could probably be a more complex data type (instead of the current "String"), perhaps dealt with as a list/tuple of components.
"path.separator" Path separator (for example, ":")
I assume this is used to separate different paths when packing them in a string. This seems very application dependent, I'm not sure I see the utility of it.
"file.separator" File separator (for example, "/")
Necessary if you need to construct file paths as strings. Let's try to avoid a tangle of "...++System.FilePath.getFileSeparator++..." constructs in code, though. I think we either should standardize the string format, or design a new data type with a simple interface to access it. How are the languages with more general facilities doing this? How often is it useful?
"user.home" User home directory "user.name" User account name
Nice to have, I think. Simple to get from the environment, but having standard wrappers would probably be a good idea. Make a module, (System.Info?) with the appropriate functions?
* Another item that would be useful in the System.Directory class would be some kind of config file path.
This would be application -- and installation -- dependent, I'm sure?
On Debian, that would be "/etc", on some systems, it might tend to be more often "/usr/local/etc".
I mean, if I compile an application myself, I use ./configure --prefix=/usr/local, and want it to keep its system-wide config in /usr/local/etc. Installing from a .deb would put config in /etc, installing in my home directory would do something else again.
User config files tend to be in ~/ and start with a dot whereas system config files end up in /etc, and don't start with a dot.)
In sum, this isn't something to standardize in the language, let the application writers decide for themselves. -kzm -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants