Date: Friday, July 24, 2020 3:14 PM
- Regarding set-file-mode, set-file-owner and set-file-group: Scsh allows the first argument to be fname, fdes or port. Does srfi-170 restrict it to just a file name?
We tried to be *extremely* specific and correct about argument specifications. These says fname/file name, so that's it. It would of course be easy in both the SRFI document and the Chibi Scheme sample implementation to add port and/or fdes. As I remember, we discussed their proper scope, at least in the context of going over every file manipulation procedure and deciding which should have which possible argument types. Can't remember why these 3 were limited to file names.
- I wonder why set-file-owner and set-file-group are separate calls, while the underlying POSIX call is one. It may be for compatibility, but will there be a case that you want to change both owner and group atomically? (I assume it rarely matters, but still, why not expose the POSIX feature?)
It would be easy to turn these into one procedure by faking something like what's in POSIX for setting timespecs for files, have a special argument that says don't change "this" argument, owner or group. More complicated to understand, though ... but the POSIX command line chown does allow setting both owner and group at the same time, by allowing the latter to be an optional argument. Would the latter be OK? And for either, what should the single procedure be named? (We'll easily spend more time discussing that than making the changes :-).
- Harold