Arthur A. Gleckler scripsit:

> > 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.
>
> I wonder whether they're ready for standardization, then.  On the
> other hand, I certainly do like having the ability to manipulate
> pathnames as something more than strings.

WG2 voted pathnames in, so a proposal was needed, and this is mine.

> Perhaps, but one rarely uses them in the same context.  It seems much
> less confusing to keep them separate.

Giving them both the same underlying representation means that programs
accepting URIs can also accept file names, which is usually a Good Thing.

--
All Norstrilians knew that humor was            John Cowan
"pleasurable corrigible malfunction".          cowan@ccil.org
        --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrilia