Re: Issue: PATHNAME-CANONICAL-TYPE (Version 1)

[sandra%cdr@cs.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore)]

The problem this tries to address hasn't been a big one for me, but I don't
see any harm in adopting this proposal.

Under the "Current Practice" section, you might add that programmers
who need to do this kind of thing now typically make a constant or
global variable that is initialized to hold the right file type for
whatever implementation is being used.  In fact, here is what I've
been using (which I believe was stolen from somebody else):

(defvar *binary-file-type*
    #+Symbolics                         (make-pathname :type "bin")
    #+(and dec common vax (not ultrix)) (make-pathname :type "FAS")
    #+(and dec common vax ultrix)       (make-pathname :type "fas")
    #+pcls                              (make-pathname :type "b")
    #+KCL                               (make-pathname :type "o")
    #+Xerox                             (make-pathname :type "dfasl")
    #+(and Lucid MC68000)               (make-pathname :type "lbin")
    #+(and Lucid VAX VMS)               (make-pathname :type "vbin")
    #+excl                              (make-pathname :type "fasl")
    #+system::cmu                       (make-pathname :type "sfasl")
    #+PRIME                             (make-pathname :type "pbin")
    #+HP                                (make-pathname :type "b")
    #+TI                                (make-pathname :type "xfasl")
    "The default file type for compiled files.")

-Sandra
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