re: PATHNAME-PRINT-READ, v1

[masinter.pa@Xerox.COM]

If this is going to be discussed at the X3j13 meeting, we should have
a new version with all of the various additions to current practice
and discussions appended.


pierson says:
KCL uses #"..."

EB says:
"For Current Practice:

Lucid CL also implements the proposed behavior.

For Cost to Users:

Users who define their own #P read macro may be unhappy.


I weakly support this change. 

..."

Masinter says:

"For Current Practice, Envos Medley prints pathnames with the syntax #.(pathname "asdf").

I like #P"asdf" better, but #.(pathname string) is currently pretty portable.

"

Barrett says:

"For Current Practice, IIM Common Lisp prints pathnames with the syntax
#.(parse-namestring "asdf" "host").  The reason for using this convention is
that for some strings you need to know what parsing conventions to use in order
to get back an equivalent pathname.  And yes, I agree it is ugly and verbose.

"

KMP and kab sent a long messages but I can't summarize easily.

Mly says "I still don't understand why this needs to be standardised upon..."
and "Even if others do feel an urgent need to allow such portablability, I
don't understand why #S(PATHNAME ...) syntax isn't acceptable."