Practical Common Lisp

exists-p. It should accept a pathname and return an equivalent pathname if the file exists and NIL if it doesn't. It should be able to accept the name of a directory in either directory or file form but should always return a directory form pathname if the file exists and is a directory. This will allow you to use file-exists-p, along with directory-pathname-p, to test whether an arbitrary name is the name of a file or directory.

In theory, file-exists-p is quite similar to the standard function PROBE- FILE; indeed, in several implementations—SBCL, LispWorks, and OpenMCL— PROBE-FILE already gives you the behavior you want for file-exists- p. But not all implementations of PROBE-FILE behave quite the same.

Allegro and CMUCL's PROBE-FILE functions are close to what you need— they will accept the name of a directory in either form but, instead of returning a directory form name, simply return the name in the same form as the argument it was passed. Luckily, if passed the name of a nondirectory in directory form, they return NIL. So with those implementations you can get the behavior you want by first passing the name to PROBE-FILE in directory form —if the file exists and is a directory, it will return the directory form name. If that call returns NIL, then you try again with a file form name.

CLISP, on the other hand, once again has its own way of doing things. Its PROBE- FILE immediately signals an error if passed a name in directory form, regardless of whether a file or directory exists with that name. It also signals an error if passed a name in file form that's actually the name of a directory. For testing whether a directory exists, CLISP provides its own function: probe- directory (in the ext package). This is almost the mirror image of PROBE-FILE: it signals an error if passed a name in file form or if passed a name in directory form that happens to name a file. The only difference is it returns T rather than a pathname when the named directory exists.

But even in CLISP you can implement the desired semantics by wrapping the calls to PROBE-FILE and probe-directory in IGNORE-ERRORS.[169]

(defun file-exists-p (pathname)
  #+(or sbcl lispworks openmcl)
  (probe-file pathname)
  #+(or allegro cmu)
  (or (probe-file (pathname-as-directory pathname))
      (probe-file pathname))
  #+clisp
  (or (ignore-errors
        (probe-file (pathname-as-file pathname)))
      (ignore-errors
        (let ((directory-form (pathname-as-directory pathname)))
          (when (ext:probe-directory directory-form)
            directory-form))))
  #-(or sbcl cmu lispworks openmcl allegro clisp)
  (error 'file-exists-p not implemented'))

The function pathname-as-file that you need for the CLISP implementation of file- exists-p is the inverse of the previously defined pathname-as-directory, returning a pathname that's the file form equivalent of its argument. This function, despite being needed here only by CLISP, is generally useful, so define it for all implementations and make it part of the library.

(defun pathname-as-file (name)
  (let ((pathname (pathname name)))
    (when (wild-pathname-p pathname)
      (error 'Can't reliably convert wild pathnames.'))
    (if (directory-pathname-p name)
      (let* ((directory (pathname-directory pathname))
             (name-and-type (pathname (first (last directory)))))
        (make-pathname
         :directory (butlast directory)
         :name (pathname-name name-and-type)
         :type (pathname-type name-and-type)
         :defaults pathname))
      pathname)))

Walking a Directory Tree

Finally, to round out this library, you can implement a function called walk-directory. Unlike the functions defined previously, this function doesn't need to do much of anything to smooth over implementation differences; it just needs to use the functions you've already defined. However, it's quite handy, and you'll use it several times in subsequent chapters. It will take the name of a directory and a function and call the function on the pathnames of all the files under the directory, recursively. It will also take two keyword arguments: :directories and :test. When :directories is true, it will call the function on the pathnames of directories as well as regular files. The :test argument, if provided, specifies another function that's invoked on each pathname before the main function is; the main function will be called only if the test function returns true.

(defun walk-directory (dirname fn &key directories (test (constantly t)))
  (labels
      ((walk (name)
         (cond
           ((directory-pathname-p name)
            (when (and directories (funcall test name))
              (funcall fn name))
            (dolist (x (list-directory name)) (walk x)))
           ((funcall test name) (funcall fn name)))))
    (walk (pathname-as-directory dirname))))

Now you have a useful library of functions for dealing with pathnames. As I mentioned, these functions will come in handy in later chapters, particularly Chapters 23 and 27, where you'll use walk-directory to crawl through directory trees containing spam messages and MP3 files. But before we get to that, though, I need to talk about object orientation, the topic of the next two chapters.

Copyright © 2003-2005, Peter Seibel

16. Object Reorientation: Generic Functions