Re: portability of pathnames

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: 23 Jun 1986 11:11-EDT
    From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
    ....
    The point I am trying to make is that pathnames really should be 100%
    implementation independent, including the contents of each of the
    components....

Get your hands on a Symbolics document set and read about Logical
Pathnames.  If I understand your requirements, Logical Pathnames are
exactly what you're looking for.  When they (we) were looking at the
Zetalisp pathname system, most of the Common Lisp designers would not
accept logical pathnames because they didn't see any use for them.
It probably was also because logical pathnames were never explained
very well.  Perhaps we ought to be rethinking that decision now.

If you get a chance to look at that documentation, I'm curious to
hear your opinion about whether that, or something like it, should
be added to Common Lisp.