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Files and Directories

We’ll see here a handful of functions and libraries to operate on files and directories.

In this chapter, we use mainly namestrings to specify filenames. In a recipe or two we also use pathnames.

Many functions will come from UIOP, so we suggest you have a look directly at it:

Of course, do not miss:

Files and File I/O in Practical Common Lisp

Getting the components of a pathname File name (sans directory)

Use file-namestring to get a file name from a pathname:

(file-namestring #p"/path/to/file.lisp") ;; => "file.lisp"

File extension

The file extension is called “pathname type” in Lisp parlance:

(pathname-type "~/foo.org")  ;; => "org"

File basename

The basename is called the “pathname name” -

(pathname-name "~/foo.org")  ;; => "foo"
(pathname-name "~/foo")      ;; => "foo"

If a directory pathname has a trailing slash, pathname-name may return nil; use pathname-directory instead -

(pathname-name "~/foo/")     ;; => NIL
(first (last (pathname-directory #P"~/foo/"))) ;; => "foo"

Parent directory

(uiop:pathname-parent-directory-pathname #P"/foo/bar/quux/")
;; => #P"/foo/bar/"

Testing whether a file exists

Use the function probe-file which will return a generalized boolean - either nil if the file doesn’t exists, or its truename (which might be different from the argument you supplied).

For more portability, use uiop:probe-file* or uiop:file-exists-p which will return the file pathname (if it exists).

$ ln -s /etc/passwd foo

* (probe-file "/etc/passwd")
#p"/etc/passwd"

* (probe-file "foo")
#p"/etc/passwd"

* (probe-file "bar")
NIL

Expanding a file or a directory name with a tilde (~)

For portability, use uiop:native-namestring:

(uiop:native-namestring "~/.emacs.d/")
"/home/me/.emacs.d/"

It also expand the tilde with files and directories that don’t exist:

(uiop:native-namestring "~/foo987.txt")
:: "/home/me/foo987.txt"

On several implementations (CCL, ABCL, ECL, CLISP, LispWorks), namestring works similarly. On SBCL, if the file or directory doesn’t exist, namestring doesn’t expand the path but returns the argument, with the tilde.

With files that exist, you can also use truename. But, at least on SBCL, it returns an error if the path doesn’t exist.

Turning a pathname into a string with Windows’ directory separator

Use again uiop:native-namestring:

CL-USER> (uiop:native-namestring #p"~/foo/")
"C:\\Users\\You\\foo\\"

See also uiop:parse-native-namestring for the inverse operation.

Creating directories

The function ensure-directories-exist creates the directories if they do not exist:

(ensure-directories-exist "foo/bar/baz/")

This may create foo, bar and baz. Don’t forget the trailing slash.

Deleting directories

Use uiop:delete-directory-tree with a pathname (#p), a trailing slash and the :validate key:

;; mkdir dirtest
(uiop:delete-directory-tree #p"dirtest/" :validate t)

You can use pathname around a string that designates a directory:

(defun rmdir (path)
  (uiop:delete-directory-tree (pathname path) :validate t))

UIOP also has delete-empty-directory

cl-fad has (fad:delete-directory-and-files "dirtest").

Merging files and directories

Use merge-pathnames, with one thing to note: if you want to append directories, the second argument must have a trailing /.

As always, look at UIOP functions. We have a uiop:merge-pathnames* equivalent which fixes corner cases.

So, here’s how to append a directory to another one:

(merge-pathnames "otherpath" "/home/vince/projects/")
;; important:                                     ^^
;; a trailing / denotes a directory.
;; => #P"/home/vince/projects/otherpath"

Look at the difference: if you don’t include a trailing slash to either paths, otherpath and projects are seen as files, so otherpath is appended to the base directory containing projects:

(merge-pathnames "otherpath" "/home/vince/projects")
;; #P"/home/vince/otherpath"
;;               ^^ no "projects", because it was seen as a file.

or again, with otherpath/ (a trailing /) but projects seen as a file:

(merge-pathnames "otherpath/" "/home/vince/projects")
;; #P"/home/vince/otherpath/projects"
;;                ^^ inserted here

Get the current working directory (CWD)

Use uiop/os:getcwd:

(uiop/os:getcwd)
;; #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/"
;;                                    ^ with a trailing slash, useful for merge-pathnames

Get the current directory relative to a Lisp project

Use asdf:system-relative-pathname system path.

Say you are working inside mysystem. It has an ASDF system declaration, the system is loaded in your Lisp image. This ASDF file is somewhere on your filesystem and you want the path to src/web/. Do this:

(asdf:system-relative-pathname "mysystem" "src/web/")
;; => #P"/home/vince/projects/mysystem/src/web/"

This will work on another user’s machine, where the system sources are located in another location.

Setting the current working directory

Use uiop:chdir path:

(uiop:chdir "/bin/")
0

The trailing slash in path is optional.

Or, to set for the current directory for the next operation only, use uiop:with-current-directory:

(let ((dir "/path/to/another/directory/"))
  (uiop:with-current-directory (dir)
      (directory-files "./")))

Opening a file

Common Lisp has open and close functions which resemble the functions of the same denominator from other programming languages you’re probably familiar with. However, it is almost always recommendable to use the macro with-open-file instead. Not only will this macro open the file for you and close it when you’re done, it’ll also take care of it if your code leaves the body abnormally (such as by a use of go, return-from, or throw). A typical use of with-open-file looks like this:

(with-open-file (str <_file-spec_>
    :direction <_direction_>
    :if-exists <_if-exists_>
    :if-does-not-exist <_if-does-not-exist_>)
  (your code here))

str is a variable which’ll be bound to the stream which is created by opening the file.
<_file-spec_> will be a truename or a pathname.
<_direction_> is usually :input (meaning you want to read from the file), :output (meaning you want to write to the file) or :io (which is for reading and writing at the same time) - the default is :input.
<_if-exists_> specifies what to do if you want to open a file for writing and a file with that name already exists - this option is ignored if you just want to read from the file. The default is :error which means that an error is signalled. Other useful options are :supersede (meaning that the new file will replace the old one), :append (content is added to the file), nil (the stream variable will be bound to nil), and :rename (i.e. the old file is renamed).
<_if-does-not-exist_> specifies what to do if the file you want to open does not exist. It is one of :error for signalling an error, :create for creating an empty file, or nil for binding the stream variable to nil. The default is, to be brief, to do the right thing depending on the other options you provided. See the CLHS for details.

Note that there are a lot more options to with-open-file. See the CLHS entry for open for all the details. You’ll find some examples on how to use with-open-file below. Also note that you usually don’t need to provide any keyword arguments if you just want to open an existing file for reading.

Reading files Reading a file into a string or a list of lines

It’s quite common to need to access the contents of a file in string form, or to get a list of lines.

uiop is included in ASDF (there is no extra library to install or system to load) and has the following functions:

(uiop:read-file-string "file.txt")

and

(uiop:read-file-lines "file.txt")

Otherwise, this can be achieved by using read-line or read-char functions, that probably won’t be the best solution. The file might not be divided into multiple lines or reading one character at a time might bring significant performance problems. To solve this problems, you can read files using buckets of specific sizes.

(with-output-to-string (out)
  (with-open-file (in "/path/to/big/file")
    (loop with buffer = (make-array 8192 :element-type 'character)
          for n-characters = (read-sequence buffer in)
          while (< 0 n-characters)
          do (write-sequence buffer out :start 0 :end n-characters)))))

Furthermore, you’re free to change the format of the read/written data, instead of using elements of type character every time. For instance, you can set :element-type type argument of with-output-to-string, with-open-file and make-array functions to '(unsigned-byte 8) to read data in octets.

Reading with an utf-8 encoding

To avoid an ASCII stream decoding error you might want to specify an UTF-8 encoding:

(with-open-file (in "/path/to/big/file"
                     :external-format :utf-8)
                 ...

Set SBCL’s default encoding format to utf-8

Sometimes you don’t control the internals of a library, so you’d better set the default encoding to utf-8. Add this line to your ~/.sbclrc:

(setf sb-impl::*default-external-format* :utf-8)

and optionally

(setf sb-alien::*default-c-string-external-format* :utf-8)

Reading a file one line at a time

read-line will read one line from a stream (which defaults to standard input) the end of which is determined by either a newline character or the end of the file. It will return this line as a string without the trailing newline character. (Note that read-line has a second return value which is true if there was no trailing newline, i.e. if the line was terminated by the end of the file.) read-line will by default signal an error if the end of the file is reached. You can inhibit this by supplying NIL as the second argument. If you do this, read-line will return nil if it reaches the end of the file.

(with-open-file (stream "/etc/passwd")
  (do ((line (read-line stream nil)
       (read-line stream nil)))
       ((null line))
       (print line)))

You can also supply a third argument which will be used instead of nil to signal the end of the file:

(with-open-file (stream "/etc/passwd")
  (loop for line = (read-line stream nil 'foo)
   until (eq line 'foo)
   do (print line)))

Reading a file one character at a time

read-char is similar to read-line, but it only reads one character as opposed to one line. Of course, newline characters aren’t treated differently from other characters by this function.

(with-open-file (stream "/etc/passwd")
  (do ((char (read-char stream nil)
       (read-char stream nil)))
       ((null char))
       (print char)))

Looking one character ahead

You can ‘look at’ the next character of a stream without actually removing it from there - this is what the function peek-char is for. It can be used for three different purposes depending on its first (optional) argument (the second one being the stream it reads from): If the first argument is nil, peek-char will just return the next character that’s waiting on the stream:

CL-USER> (with-input-from-string (stream "I'm not amused")
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (peek-char nil stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (values))

#\I
#\'
#\'

If the first argument is T, peek-char will skip whitespace characters, i.e. it will return the next non-whitespace character that’s waiting on the stream. The whitespace characters will vanish from the stream as if they had been read by read-char:

CL-USER> (with-input-from-string (stream "I'm not amused")
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (peek-char t stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (values))

#\I
#\'
#\m
#\n
#\n
#\o

If the first argument to peek-char is a character, the function will skip all characters until that particular character is found:

CL-USER> (with-input-from-string (stream "I'm not amused")
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (peek-char #\a stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (values))

#\I
#\a
#\a
#\m

Note that peek-char has further optional arguments to control its behaviour on end-of-file similar to those for read-line and read-char (and it will signal an error by default):

CL-USER> (with-input-from-string (stream "I'm not amused")
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (peek-char #\d stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (peek-char nil stream nil 'the-end))
           (values))

#\I
#\d
#\d
THE-END

You can also put one character back onto the stream with the function unread-char. You can use it as if, after you have read a character, you decide that you’d better used peek-char instead of read-char:

CL-USER> (with-input-from-string (stream "I'm not amused")
           (let ((c (read-char stream)))
             (print c)
             (unread-char c stream)
             (print (read-char stream))
             (values)))

#\I
#\I

Note that the front of a stream doesn’t behave like a stack: You can only put back exactly one character onto the stream. Also, you must put back the same character that has been read previously, and you can’t unread a character if none has been read before.

Random access to a File

Use the function file-position for random access to a file. If this function is used with one argument (a stream), it will return the current position within the stream. If it’s used with two arguments (see below), it will actually change the file position in the stream.

CL-USER> (with-input-from-string (stream "I'm not amused")
           (print (file-position stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (file-position stream))
           (file-position stream 4)
           (print (file-position stream))
           (print (read-char stream))
           (print (file-position stream))
           (values))

0
#\I
1
4
#\n
5

Writing content to a file

With with-open-file, specify :direction :output and use write-sequence inside:

(with-open-file (f <pathname> :direction :output
                              :if-exists :supersede
                              :if-does-not-exist :create)
    (write-sequence s f))

If the file exists, you can also :append content to it.

If it doesn’t exist, you can :error out. See the standard for more details.

Using libraries

The library Alexandria has a function called write-string-into-file

(alexandria:write-string-into-file content "file.txt")

Alternatively, the library str has the to-file function.

(str:to-file "file.txt" content) ;; with optional options

Both alexandria:write-string-into-file and str:to-file take the same keyword arguments as cl:open that controls file creation: :if-exists and if-does-not-exists.

Getting file attributes (size, access time,…)

Osicat is a lightweight operating system interface for Common Lisp on POSIX-like systems, including Windows. With Osicat we can get and set environment variables (now doable with uiop:getenv), manipulate files and directories, pathnames and a bit more.

file-attributes is a newer and lighter OS portability library specifically for getting file attributes, using system calls (cffi).

SBCL with its sb-posix contrib can be used too.

File attributes (Osicat)

Once Osicat is installed, it also defines the osicat-posix system, which permits us to get file attributes.

(ql:quickload "osicat")

(let ((stat (osicat-posix:stat #P"./files.md")))
  (osicat-posix:stat-size stat))  ;; => 10629

We can get the other attributes with the following methods:

osicat-posix:stat-dev
osicat-posix:stat-gid
osicat-posix:stat-ino
osicat-posix:stat-uid
osicat-posix:stat-mode
osicat-posix:stat-rdev
osicat-posix:stat-size
osicat-posix:stat-atime
osicat-posix:stat-ctime
osicat-posix:stat-mtime
osicat-posix:stat-nlink
osicat-posix:stat-blocks
osicat-posix:stat-blksize

File attributes (file-attributes)

Install the library with

(ql:quickload "file-attributes")

Its package is org.shirakumo.file-attributes. You can use a package-local nickname for a shorter access to its functions, for example:

(uiop:add-package-local-nickname :file-attributes :org.shirakumo.file-attributes)

Then simply use the functions:

access-time, modification-time, creation-time. You can setf them.
owner, group, and attributes. The values used are OS specific for these functions. The attributes flag can be decoded and encoded via a standardised form with decode-attributes and encode-attributes.

CL-USER> (file-attributes:decode-attributes
           (file-attributes:attributes #p"test.txt"))
(:READ-ONLY NIL :HIDDEN NIL :SYSTEM-FILE NIL :DIRECTORY NIL :ARCHIVED T :DEVICE
 NIL :NORMAL NIL :TEMPORARY NIL :SPARSE NIL :LINK NIL :COMPRESSED NIL :OFFLINE
 NIL :NOT-INDEXED NIL :ENCRYPTED NIL :INTEGRITY NIL :VIRTUAL NIL :NO-SCRUB NIL
 :RECALL NIL)

See its documentation.

File attributes (sb-posix)

This contrib is loaded by default on POSIX systems.

First get a stat object for a file, then get the stat you want:

CL-USER> (sb-posix:stat "test.txt")
#<SB-POSIX:STAT {10053FCBE3}>

CL-USER> (sb-posix:stat-mtime *)
1686671405

Listing files and directories

Some functions below return pathnames, so you might need the following:

(namestring #p"/foo/bar/baz.txt")           ==> "/foo/bar/baz.txt"
(directory-namestring #p"/foo/bar/baz.txt") ==> "/foo/bar/"
(file-namestring #p"/foo/bar/baz.txt")      ==> "baz.txt"

Listing files in a directory

(uiop:directory-files "./")

Returns a list of pathnames:

(#P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/.emacs"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/.gitignore"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/AppendixA.jpg"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/AppendixB.jpg"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/AppendixC.jpg"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/CHANGELOG"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/CONTRIBUTING.md"
 […]

Listing sub-directories

(uiop:subdirectories "./")

(#P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/.git/"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/.sass-cache/"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/_includes/"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/_layouts/"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/_site/"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/assets/")

Iterating on files (lazily)

In addition to the above functions, we mention solutions that lazily traverse a directory. They don’t load the entire list of files before returning it.

Osicat has with-directory-iterator:

(with-directory-iterator (next "/")
  (loop for entry = (next)
        while entry
        when (member :group-write (file-permissions entry))
        collect entry))
;; => (#P"tmp/")

LispWorks has the fast-directory-files function, and AllegroCL has map-over-directory.

Traversing (walking) directories recursively

See uiop/filesystem:collect-sub*directories. It takes as arguments:

a directory
a collectp function
a recursep function
a collector function

Given a directory, when collectp returns true with the directory, call the collector function on the directory, and recurse each of its subdirectories on which recursep returns true.

This function will thus let you traverse a filesystem hierarchy, superseding the functionality of cl-fad:walk-directory.

The behavior in presence of symlinks is not portable. Use IOlib to handle such situations.

Examples:

this collects only subdirectories:

(defparameter *dirs* nil "All recursive directories.")

(uiop:collect-sub*directories "~/cl-cookbook"
    (constantly t)
    (constantly t)
    (lambda (it) (push it *dirs*)))

this collects files and subdirectories:

(let ((results))
    (uiop:collect-sub*directories
     "./"
     (constantly t)
     (constantly t)
     (lambda (subdir)
       (setf results
             (nconc results
                    ;; A detail: we return strings, not pathnames.
                    (loop for path in (append (uiop:subdirectories subdir)
                                              (uiop:directory-files subdir))
                          collect (namestring path))))))
    results)

we can do the same with the cl-fad library:

(cl-fad:walk-directory "./"
  (lambda (name)
     (format t "~A~%" name))
   :directories t)

and of course, we can use an external tool: the good ol’ unix find, or the newer fd (fdfind on Debian) that has a simpler syntax and filters out a set of common files and directories by default (node_modules, .git…):

(str:lines (uiop:run-program (list "find" ".") :output :string))
;; or
(str:lines (uiop:run-program (list "fdfind") :output :string))

Here with the help of the str library.

Finding files matching a pattern

Below we simply list files of a directory and check that their name contains a given string.

(remove-if-not (lambda (it)
                   (search "App" (namestring it)))
               (uiop:directory-files "./"))

(#P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/AppendixA.jpg"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/AppendixB.jpg"
 #P"/home/vince/projects/cl-cookbook/AppendixC.jpg")

We used namestring to convert a pathname to a string, thus a sequence that search can deal with.

Finding files with a wildcard

We can not transpose unix wildcards to portable Common Lisp.

In pathname strings we can use * and ** as wildcards. This works in absolute and relative pathnames.

(directory #P"*.jpg")

(directory #P"**/*.png")

Change the default pathname

The concept of . denoting the current directory does not exist in portable Common Lisp. This may exist in specific filesystems and specific implementations.

Also ~ to denote the home directory does not exist. They may be recognized by some implementations as non-portable extensions.

*default-pathname-defaults*provides a default for some pathname operations.

(let ((*default-pathname-defaults* (pathname "/bin/")))
          (directory "*sh"))
(#P"/bin/zsh" #P"/bin/tcsh" #P"/bin/sh" #P"/bin/ksh" #P"/bin/csh" #P"/bin/bash")