device - a valid pathname device. Complicated defaulting behavior; see below.

directory - a valid pathname directory. Complicated defaulting behavior; see below.

name - a valid pathname name. Complicated defaulting behavior; see below.

type - a valid pathname type. Complicated defaulting behavior; see below.

version - a valid pathname version. Complicated defaulting behavior; see below.

defaults - a pathname designator. The default is a pathname whose host component is the same as the host component of the value of *default-pathname-defaults*, and whose other components are all nil.

case - one of :common or :local. The default is :local.

pathname - a pathname.

After the components supplied explicitly by host, device, directory, name, type, and version are filled in, the merging rules used by merge-pathnames are used to fill in any unsupplied components from the defaults supplied by defaults.

Whenever a pathname is constructed the components may be canonicalized if appropriate. For the explanation of the arguments that can be supplied for each component, see Section 19.2.1 Pathname Components.

If case is supplied, it is treated as described in Section 19.2.2.1.2 Case in Pathname Components.

The resulting pathname is a logical pathname if and only its host component is a logical host or a string that names a defined logical host.

If the directory is a string, it should be the name of a top level directory, and should not contain any punctuation characters; that is, specifying a string, str, is equivalent to specifying the list (:absolute str). Specifying the symbol :wild is equivalent to specifying the list (:absolute :wild-inferiors), or (:absolute :wild) in a file system that does not support :wild-inferiors.

 ;; Implementation A -- an implementation with access to a single
 ;;  Unix file system.  This implementation happens to never display
 ;;  the `host' information in a namestring, since there is only one host. 
 (make-pathname :directory '(:absolute "public" "games")
                :name "chess" :type "db")
 #P"/public/games/chess.db" 

 ;; Implementation B -- an implementation with access to one or more
 ;;  VMS file systems.  This implementation displays `host' information
 ;;  in the namestring only when the host is not the local host.
 ;;  It uses a double colon to separate a host name from the host's local
 ;;  file name.
 (make-pathname :directory '(:absolute "PUBLIC" "GAMES")
                :name "CHESS" :type "DB")
 #P"SYSDISK:[PUBLIC.GAMES]CHESS.DB" 
 (make-pathname :host "BOBBY"
                :directory '(:absolute "PUBLIC" "GAMES")
                :name "CHESS" :type "DB")
 #P"BOBBY::SYSDISK:[PUBLIC.GAMES]CHESS.DB" 

 ;; Implementation C -- an implementation with simultaneous access to
 ;;  multiple file systems from the same Lisp image.  In this 
 ;;  implementation, there is a convention that any text preceding the
 ;;  first colon in a pathname namestring is a host name.
 (dolist (case '(:common :local))
   (dolist (host '("MY-LISPM" "MY-VAX" "MY-UNIX"))
     (print (make-pathname :host host :case case
                           :directory '(:absolute "PUBLIC" "GAMES")
                           :name "CHESS" :type "DB"))))
#P"MY-LISPM:>public>games>chess.db"
#P"MY-VAX:SYSDISK:[PUBLIC.GAMES]CHESS.DB"
#P"MY-UNIX:/public/games/chess.db"
#P"MY-LISPM:>public>games>chess.db" 
#P"MY-VAX:SYSDISK:[PUBLIC.GAMES]CHESS.DB" 
#P"MY-UNIX:/PUBLIC/GAMES/CHESS.DB" 
  NIL