Re: Don't concat directories to file names

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

Juanma Barranquero writes:

 > I know, I'm even using `directory-file-name' in The Function Without A
 > Name. But Emacs users and developers apparently don't, if they don't
 > balk at the idea of a function *-file returning the path (cough, the
 > filename, I mean) of a directory.

It's not globally consistent, of course.

As with many other concepts in Emacs there is a confusion between
objects, names for objects, and handles (references) to objects.
Consider fonts and coding systems.  (XEmacs actually has font objects
and coding system objects, but I have yet to see a case where the
distinction between a symbol naming such an object and the actual
object is useful.)

Consider that Emacs doesn't have a notion of file handle.  What serves
for a file handle in Emacs is a buffer visiting a file.  Thus the
distinction between the verbs "find" and "locate", which serves the
same kind of purpose with complete different syntax.

I don't mean to argue that you're "wrong" (how could you be?  this is
definitely a YMMV kinda thang :-).  Nor does this directly address the
PATH-style path vs. URL-style path issue.  This helps me to
rationalize it, that's all.