Subject: Re: (open :direction :probe ...) vs probe-file From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 24 Jan 2004 10:34:25 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3283929265717785KL2065E@naggum.no> * 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 <stream>).) | (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.