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Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:40:00 +0200
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Thomas_L=F8cke?= <"tl at ada-dk.org">
Organization: Ada DK
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Subject: Ada.Directories.Base_Name and dot files
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Date: 2009-10-07T14:40:00+02:00
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Hey all,

While working my way through the excellent Ada.Directories package, I've 
stumbled on a minor annoyance: The Base_Name function does not handle 
dot files very gracefully.

Here's an example:

++++
with Ada.Text_IO;
with Ada.Directories;

procedure Dot is
    package IO renames Ada.Text_IO;
    package D renames Ada.Directories;

begin
    IO.Put_Line (Item => "1: " & D.Base_Name (Name => "foo.txt"));
    IO.Put_Line (Item => "2: " & D.Base_Name (Name => ".foo"));
    IO.Put_Line (Item => "3: " & D.Base_Name (Name => ".foo.bar"));
end Dot;
++++

The output I get is this:

++++
1: foo
2:
3: .foo
++++

What I had hoped for, was this:

++++
1: foo
2: .foo
3: .foo
++++

With the current null string solution, you'd have to do some manual 
parsing to get to the actual basename of a dot file.

Instead of returning a null string when the first character is a dot, 
couldn't Base_Name just as well just return the basename *with* the dot, 
because that is the actual basename for a dot file. The dot is part of 
the name.

Is there a good reason for the current behavior?

There's a comment in the body of Base_Name:

++++
--  Look for the last dot in the file name and return the part of the
--  file name preceding this last dot. If the first dot is the first
--  character of the file name, the base name is the empty string.
++++

So it's not like the programmers behind this wasn't aware of dot files, 
they've just opted for a somewhat odd solution, in my humble, and not 
very expert, opinion.  :o)

-- 
Regards,
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http:ada-dk.org
IRC nick: ThomasLocke