On 2/19/10 Feb 19 -2:19 PM, Faré wrote:
- SPLIT-PATH-STRING --- this is the one I think might need a ticket.
I confess I'm bamboozled by this one. It's called on (component-name component), not on a pathname. Can you explain why the COMPONENT-NAME would end up being a string that looks like a pathname?
This SPLIT-PATH-STRING stuff looks like a relatively recent gwking addition (if I understand the output of git blame correctly). I don't see what use case it was introduced for. Anyone else have a clue? I see this docstring for component-name:
gwking might have done the checkin, but I am the one who wrote the code at ITA, where we wanted to be able to use "foo/bar" as the name of a component, instead of having all those ugly :pathname #.(make-pathname ...) ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE for hundreds of components.
"Component name: designator for a string composed of portable pathname characters"
but I have never seen at component-name that was anything other than a simple name, never something with directory separators. Is this ever used in the wild? Or was this something that was added in an excess of enthusiasm and that should just be killed (like the undocumented tripartite FEATURE form)?
Yes, we use it a lot at ITA, and ASDF-DEPENDENCY-GROVEL and XCVB's ASDF front-end and backend use it, too.
This change is 100% backwards compatible, since the behavior before then was "undefined" when the #/ character appeared in a name. Now it's defined and portable.
OK, so it's defined and portable. Great. Now let's get it documented, and it will be great!
A good way to dodge the (until now) busted module dependencies, too! ;-)
I'll try to get those docstrings committed, and maybe add one for component-name.
r