[erlang-questions] Newbie questions about file module

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Scott Lystig Fritchie
<fritchie@REDACTED> wrote:
> Ville Silventoinen <ville.silventoinen@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> How frequent is it to use a deep I/O list as a file name?  (Perhaps I've
> been in C land for too long to think that using a deep I/O list like
> that is actually a good idea?)  Doesn't an argument like that get
> automatically flattened when passed to the efile_drv driver?  If yes,
> why bother flattening on the Erlang side?

Unfortunately, for historical reasons, filenames are allowed to
contain atoms and atoms are not allowed in I/O lists. At one time
in OTP's history, we wanted to disallowed atoms in filenames, but
it turned out that many applications used atoms in filenames.

/Bjorn

-- 
Björn Gustavsson, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB