Table of Contents
For most operations, pathnames denoting files and pathnames denoting directories cannot be used interchangeably.
#P"foo/bar" denotes
 the file #P"bar" in the directory #P"foo",
 while #P"foo/bar/" denotes the subdirectory
 #P"bar" of the directory #P"foo".
#P"foo\\bar"
 denotes the file #P"bar" in the directory #P"foo",
 while #P"foo\\bar\\" denotes the subdirectory
 #P"bar" of the directory #P"foo".
CUSTOM:*DEVICE-PREFIX*
  controls translation between Cygwin pathnames
  (e.g., #P"/cygdrive/c/gnu/clisp/") and native
  Win32 pathnames (e.g., #P"C:\\gnu\\clisp\\")
  When it is set to NIL, no translations occur and the Cygwin port
  will not understand the native paths and the native Win32 port will
  not understand the Cygwin paths.
  When its value is a string, it is used by PARSE-NAMESTRING to
  translate into the appropriate platform-specific representation,
  so that on Cygwin, (PARSE-NAMESTRING "c:/gnu/clisp/")
  returns #P"/cygdrive/c/gnu/clisp/",
  while on Win32 (PARSE-NAMESTRING "/cygdrive/c/gnu/clisp/")
  returns #P"C:/gnu/clisp/".
  The initial value is "cygdrive", you should edit
  config.lisp to change it.This is especially important for the directory-handling functions.
Table 19.1. The minimum filename syntax that may be used portably
| pathname | meaning | 
|---|---|
| "xxx" | for a file with name xxx | 
| "xxx.yy" | for a file with name xxxand typeyy | 
| ".yy" | for a pathname with type yyand no
    name or with name.yyand no type,
    depending on the value ofCUSTOM:*PARSE-NAMESTRING-DOT-FILE*. | 
Hereby xxx denotes 1 to 8 characters,
 and yy denotes 1 to 3 characters, each of
 which being either an alphanumeric character or the underscore
 #\_.  Other properties of pathname syntax vary between
 operating systems.
| These notes document CLISP version 2.49 | Last modified: 2010-07-07 |