On Monday 01 December 2003 8:12 pm, Tim Rowledge wrote:
> FileList>directory: uses a slightly tacky way of indenting what looks
> like a list of directories (by sticking 'n' blanks in front of the
> directory name) which is reused in FileList2. So far as I can see the
> 'volList' array instvar isn't really used in FileList2 except inasmuch
> as a few inherited methods use it.
>
> Looks to me as if the app really needs a clean rewrite.

That's true.

I started rewriting the file name stuff and got sidetracked, but ran into that 
same conclusion.

I figured that it was about time to get rid of the assumption that there is 
only one kind of FileDirectory in a given Squeak image.

Why can't I talk about a DosFileDirectory in a Unix Squeak?

Anyway, does anyone know of a good, clean way to deal with filenames across 
platforms?

I looked at Java and Perl; neither one of them impressed me much.

At OOPSLA we talked about the idea of representing filenames internally as 
file:// URLs, and translating them to and from the native format as needed 
(for the VMs and perhaps for display to the user).

Some file systems (like Windows and Amiga) have the concept of (logical or 
physical) volumes, others (like Unix) try to hide the volumes.

Most of the file systems I know of are hierarchical, and would probably map 
well to a hierarchical URL scheme.

Ideas?