exists? is broken on the replpad

[gchiu]

exists? http://www.rebol.co
** Script Error: incompatible or duplicate parameter: /only
** Where: info? if exists? main
** Near: [
return info?/only target **]
** File: -tmp-boot-
** Line: 4786

[hostilefork]

So R3-Alpha had the concept of QUERY, which was supposed to be a method that different ports could respond to in their own way. But there was no real design for it.

INFO? was something bad built on top of that non-designed QUERY concept.

EXISTS? is another level of not-thought-out abstraction on top of INFO?

We have a version of INFO? in ReplPad that was hacked in, just to support URL!...and it uses JS-HEAD:

info?: func [url [url!]] [
    o: js-head url
    return make object! [
        name: url
        size: to integer! o.content-length
        date: if in o 'last-modified [rfc2616-to-date o.last-modified] else [_]
        type: 'url
    ]
]

As noted, it lacks the /ONLY refinement that EXISTS? uses. (There's no specialized version of EXISTS? for the ReplPad, so it has the same implementation in LIB that expects the /ONLY refinement.)

This stuff needs some better thinking applied. We want a version of EXISTS? for the ReplPad that can answer the question for the local storage as well as URL!. Ideally this would go through the port model with some kind of question.

I've wondered if doing everything via web standards may be the way to go. So the ports would have a status code come back and say 404 for not found, even for local files. Something along those lines, but it's just a kind of abstract thought.