Arthur A. Gleckler scripsit:

> Would you be willing to write a little bit about how this proposal
> compares to what different Scheme implementations already provide?

AFAIK, only Kawa and MIT provide pathnames as a built-in, though there
may be external packages that provide them on other systems.
MIT is essentially CL in semantics, whereas Kawa is mostly about URIs.

> Also, what's the motivation for unifying the API for URLs with that
> for filenames?

That they are basically the same thing, and that URLs are essentially
a mostly-upward-compatible extension.  Distinct parsers are needed
because an URL is technically a valid Posix pathname, though a very
unlikely one.

--
John Cowan  cowan@ccil.org  http://ccil.org/~cowan
The penguin geeks is happy / As under the waves they lark
The closed-source geeks ain't happy / They sad cause they in the dark
But geeks in the dark is lucky / They in for a worser treat
One day when the Borg go belly-up / Guess who wind up on the street.