[Ecls-list] ECL's rename-file problems

[Zach Beane]

Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll <juanjose.garciaripoll at gmail.com> writes:

> (rename-file "foo.exe" "faa") -> "faa.exe"
>
> Unfortunately at some point it seemed ok to follow SBCL and interpret
> physical pathnames without extension as having :type NIL and drop support
> of :unspecific, as it leads to non-readable pathnames (i.e. a single
> namestring does not identify uniquely a pathname).
>
> However, while this would seem a case for :unspecific instead of NIL in
> missing components, following that route would mean that (merge-pathnames
> "faa" "foo.txt") -> "faa"
>
> I do not know which one is more annoying.

I first found rename-file's behavior unpleasantly surprising at first,
but now that I know how it works I take advantage of it, since it *is*
specified clearly that it works that way.

Zach