CREATE DIRECTORY

[Steve Haflich <smh@Franz.COM>]

   From: Rob_MacLachlan@LISP-PMAX2.SLISP.CS.CMU.edu

      X3J13 friends -- have we really overlooked directory creation?  Steve
      Haflich and I have hobnobbed a bit on what might be a de facto approach
      between Lucid and Franz; but this might need more serious discussion?
      Send me and Steve mail privately if you want to join the yakking.

   Since CMU CL is a Unix CL, we're interested.  Actually, it would be nice to
   have a standard Unix CL binding.  Have Lucid and Allegro converged on a
   de-facto standard?

No, Lucid and Franz have not yet fixed on a standard, or even a
proposal.  You are very welcome, even encouraged, to contribute to the
effort.  It might or might not be too late and/or not worth the effort
to engrave any new facets of standardization onto the X3J13 jewel --
there will be resistance to any additions at this late date.  However,
an agrement between the major players would certainly become a de
facto standard, and useful to the user community.

   CMU has evolved its own approach, which surely differs
   in many inconsequential (but annoying) ways.  There are lots of vaguenesses
   in options to DIRECTORY, implementation of OPEN options (:rename,
   :rename-and-delete, :append), etc.

While we're at it, it would be reasonable to come to agreement how
these options should work on certain popular platforms.  There might
be good reasons why :supercede/:rename (for example) want to be
specified differently on a LM fs and on a Sun, but there is no reason
for it to work differently in different implementations, each running
on a Sun.

I'm also concerned that there has never been a way to specify file
permissions when creating a file, nor even to enquire about
permissions.  No one to my memory has ever complained about the lack,
but still...

I haven't had a lot of time to think constructively about these
things, unfortunately.