From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed1.e.nsc.no!nsc.no!nextra.com!uio.no!nntp.uio.no!not-for-mail From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: (open :direction :probe ...) vs probe-file Date: 24 Jan 2004 10:34:25 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 28 Message-ID: <3283929265717785KL2065E@naggum.no> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: readme.uio.no 1074940466 26795 129.240.65.201 (24 Jan 2004 10:34:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@uio.no NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:34:26 +0000 (UTC) Mail-Copies-To: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:10656 * Peter Seibel | Unless I've missed something, there's not a lot of difference between | (open file :direction :probe) and (probe-file file). Is «file» here intended to be «pathname»? Note that both OPEN and PROBE-FILE accept pathname designators, not just pathnames. Also, they differ remarkably in the type of the return value. | Do folks have particular stylistic preferences? The two functions perform very different functions. The intersection is actually rather uninteresting. For instance, you may supply OPEN with :IF-DOES-NOT-EXIST. OPEN returns a stream with a specified element-type that you should expect to be honored if you pass the same stream to a later OPEN call. (Not that this expectation is satisfied everywhere, but at least you can provide the argument explicitly with :element-type (stream-element-type ).) | (Or have I missed some distinction?) I wonder if you are fully aware of the factors you chose to ignore in order to believe they are so similar. -- Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.