[erlang-questions] Newbie questions about file module

[Scott Lystig Fritchie]

Bjorn Gustavsson <bgustavsson@REDACTED> wrote:

>> How frequent is it to use a deep I/O list as a file name?  [...]

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

Sorry for picking up a thread that's a month old but ... {trying to
understand what you're implying} ... those legacy/whatever apps are
using filenames with deep lists *and* one or more list members may be
atoms?  Oi!

Looking at one of Ville's followup messages ... 27% of his runtime spent
sanity checking for that kind of rare oddity is ... enough to ... use a
lot of ellipses.  ...      ...

-Scott