RE: System.FilePath propsal (Was: Cabal feedback notes)

On 26 October 2004 19:30, Krasimir Angelov wrote:

--- Peter Simons wrote:

...

I think the use of FilePath is not a good idea to begin with. A file path should be a data type something like this, IMHO:

type Segment = String data FilePath = Path [Segment] | RootedPath [Segment]

You shouldn't write slashes or backslashes which are converted later, you should use a, say :/: operator to build paths portably right from the start.

I don't think I will be happy with that. Most of I/O functions in Haskell uses FilePath as String. If we use data type instead of String we need to pretty print/parse the structure each time when we use it for I/O.

Yes, in some sense having an abstract type or a datatype for FilePaths would be the right thing. But it's a much larger change, and would probably break a lot of code. The goal here is just to provide some utilities that already exist in one form or another in several places. By all means start discussing the ultimate FilePath representation separately, though. Cheers, Simon