UIOP:UNIX-NAMESTRING loses UNC path information on Allegro

[Luís Oliveira]

CL-USER> #P"\\\\host\\share\\path\\to\\file.ext"
#P"\\\\host\\share\\path\\to\\file.ext"

CL-USER> (describe *)
; No value
#P"\\\\host\\share\\path\\to\\file.ext" is a structure of type
PATHNAME. It has these slots:
  EXCL::HOST "host"
  EXCL::DEVICE "share"
  DIRECTORY (:ABSOLUTE "path" "to")
  EXCL::NAME "file"
  TYPE "ext"
  EXCL::VERSION :UNSPECIFIC
  NAMESTRING "\\\\host\\share\\path\\to\\file.ext"
  EXCL::HASH NIL
  EXCL::DIR-NAMESTRING "\\path\\to\\"
  EXCL::PLIST NIL

CL-USER> (uiop:unix-namestring **)
"/path/to/file.ext"

;; I was expecting "//host/share/path/to/file.ext" at this point.

CL-USER> (lisp-implementation-version)
"9.0 [64-bit Windows] (Aug 13, 2014 17:16)"
("lisp_build 66")

[Robert P. Goldman (rpgoldman)]

Here is the docsctring for UNIX-NAMESTRING:

    "Given a non-wild PATHNAME, return a Unix-style namestring for it.
If the PATHNAME is NIL or a STRING, return it unchanged.

This only considers the DIRECTORY, NAME and TYPE components of the pathname.
This is a portable solution for representing relative pathnames,
But unless you are running on a Unix system, it is not a general solution
to representing native pathnames.

An error is signaled if the argument is not NULL, a STRING or a PATHNAME,
or if it is a PATHNAME but some of its components are not recognized."

So I'm afraid UIOP:UNIX-NAMESTRING is simply the wrong function to do what you want.

I will close this as INVALID, unless you would like to turn it into a feature request for a new function that WILL do what you want. If so, please add a comment with a specification for the function you would like to see.

[Luís Oliveira (luismbo)]

Oh, OK. Definitely should have read the docstring. Sorry about that. In my specific case, I think I want something more along the lines of NATIVE-NAMESTRING but with forward rather than backslashes which I can easily implement and I don't it is something generally useful. I've marked the bug invalid. Thanks for your quick response!