Incompatible change to file-attributes - this is how it can look (was: [PATCH 21.5] Add ID-FORMAT to file-attributes (Suggestions are welcome))

Background: making file-attributes compatible with the GNU version triggered an idea of changing the interface to file attributes into something incompatible. The discussion has taken place in xemacs-patches which might not attract so many readers so I move this to xemacs-beta now. I did this to try the idea out. * Core Since file-attributes more or less is what stat(2) delivers I renamed file-attribute to file-stat in XEmacs core. file-stat further returns a vector instead of a list. It is not a 100% match to stat but good enough to warrant that name I think. Since we use file-attribute internally in elisp files in core those where changed to use file-stat instead. To get to the new functionality I reused the function user-login-name that provides the conversion from uid to username. I also added a new function get-group-name that provides the group name from the group id. Q: Since I don't really understand the file handler business with packages such as tramp I don't know how this core change will influence those. I guess file-attributes in those places would need to be changed to use of file-stat instead!? * xemacs-base In xemacs-base I added a new file os.el which provides access functions to the file-stat data. Such as "file-stat/uid". So for getting the uid of a file you would write: (file-stat/uid (file-stat "file")) I also introduced there the vectorized file-attributes function called file-attr that returns in a vector everything that file-stat does plus two more fields, user-login-name and group-name. (This is the interface that has been described as backwards compatible since the new fields are added instead of replacing fields.) * fsf-compat Finally in fsf-compat I added file-attributes with the GNU compatibility interface. * Conclusion? This can be done in other ways and it can be improved but now you see more how it will turn out if we do like this. Is this how you would want it? If not, how would you like to change it? Yours -- %% Mats _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta