[armedbear-devel] Proposal for URL to be used as Pathnames

[Kevin Reid]

On Mar 26, 2010, at 4:34, Mark Evenson wrote:

> I've [committed to an initial design][1] for URLs to be used as
> Pathnames, which I am in the process of implementing.  The primary use
> of this functionality will be to be able to eventually express OSGi
> bundles within ASDF system definitions.


Two general comments without having looked at the code or the  
mentioned paper:

   * Make sure you're not assuming *too much* about URL syntax; stick to
     what's stated in the URI Generic Syntax RFC and/or particular  
scheme
     RFCs.

     In particular, make sure you're correctly handling the 'reserved'
     characters and not making too many assumptions about what is
     equivalent, or about what cannot occur.

   * On the other hand, it would seem natural that a pathname with, say,
     directory (:ABSOLUTE "qty" "1/2 lb") should become the URL
       whatever://.../qty/1%2F2%20lb/
     i.e., the user should be able to ignore the encoding/syntax/
     escaping issues of URLs when working with them in a data structure.
     But this may conflict with being able to handle the reserved
     characters unambiguously. The central question is "What does % mean
     in a PATHNAME-component string?". Make sure that the answer is
     consistent.

-- 
Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>