encodeWhite translates whitespace in filenames to a darcs-specific format (numerical representation according to ord surrounded by backslashes). Note that backslashes are also escaped since they are used in the encoding.

encodeWhite "hello there" == "hello\32\there"
encodeWhite "hello\there" == "hello\92\there"

decodeWhite interprets the Darcs-specific "encoded" filenames produced by encodeWhite

decodeWhite "hello\32\there"  == Right "hello there"
decodeWhite "hello\92\there"  == Right "hello\there"
decodeWhite "hello\there"   == Left "malformed filename"

Take an absolute path and a string representing a (possibly relative) path and combine them into an absolute path. If the second argument is already absolute, then the first argument gets ignored. This function also takes care that the result is converted to Posix convention and normalized. Also, parent directories ("..") at the front of the string argument get canceled out against trailing directory parts of the absolute path argument.

Regarding the last point, someone more familiar with how these functions are used should verify that this is indeed necessary or at least useful.

Interpret a possibly relative path wrt the current working directory. This also canonicalizes the path, resolving symbolic links etc.

This is for situations where a string (e.g. a command line argument) may take the value "-" to mean stdin or stdout (which one depends on context) instead of a normal file path.

Execute either the first or the second argument action, depending on whether the given path is an AbsolutePath or stdin/stdout.

Paths which are relative to the local darcs repository and normalized. Note: These are understood not to have the dot in front.

Make the second path relative to the first, if possible. Note that this returns an empty SubPath if the inputs are equal.

Transform a SubPath into an AnchoredPath.

The first argument must be the absolute path of a directory, the second is an arbitrary absolute path. Find the longest prefix of path that points to the same directory; if there is none, return Nothing, else return Just the remainder.

Iteratively tries find first non-existing path generated by buildName, it feeds to buildName the number starting with -1. When it generates non-existing path and it isn't first, it displays the message created with buildMsg. Usually used for generation of the name like path_number when path already exist (e.g. darcs.net_0).

Construct a filter from a list of AnchoredPaths, that will accept any path that is either a parent or a child of any of the listed paths, and discard everything else.

Make a Name from a String. May fail if the input String is invalid, that is, "", ".", "..", or contains a /.

Make a Name from a ByteString.

This is a type of "sane" file paths. These are always canonic in the sense that there are no stray slashes, no ".." components and similar. They are usually used to refer to a location within a Tree, but a relative filesystem path works just as well. These are either constructed from individual name components (using "appendPath", "catPaths" and "makeName"), or converted from a FilePath ("unsafeFloatPath" -- but take care when doing that).

Append an element to the end of a path.

Take a "root" directory and an anchored path and produce a full FilePath. Moreover, you can use anchorPath "" to get a relative FilePath.

Check whether a path is a prefix of another path.

The effect of renaming on paths. The first argument is the old path, the second is the new path, and the third is the possibly affected path we are interested in.

Get parent (path) of a given path. foobarbaz -> foo/bar

List all (proper) parents of a given path. foobarbaz -> [.,foo, foo/bar]

Replace the second arg's parent with the first arg.

Catenate two paths together. Not very safe, but sometimes useful (e.g. when you are representing paths relative to a different point than a Tree root).

Is the given path in (or equal to) the _darcs metadata directory?

For displaying paths to the user. It should never be used for on-disk patch storage. This adds the "./" for consistency with how repo paths are displayed by showPatch and friends, except for the root path which is displayed as plain ".".

Interpret an AnchoredPath as relative the current working directory. Intended for IO operations in the file system. Use with care!

Take a relative FilePath and turn it into an AnchoredPath. This is a partial function. Basically, by using unsafeFloatPath, you are testifying that the argument is a path relative to some common root -- i.e. the root of the associated Tree object. In particular, the input path may not contain any ocurrences of "." or ".." after normalising. You should sanitize any FilePaths before you declare them "good" by converting into AnchoredPath (using this function), especially if the FilePath come from any external source (command line, file, environment, network, etc)