(original) (raw)

On 10 Jul 2014 03:39, "Victor Stinner" <victor.stinner@gmail.com> wrote:
\>
\> 2014-07-10 9:04 GMT+02:00 Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com>:
\> > As someone (Tim?) pointed out later in the thread,
\> > FindFirstFile/FindNextFile doesn't follow symlinks by default (and nor
\> > do the dirent entries on Unix). So whether or not it's "natural", the
\> > "free" functionality provided by the OS is that of lstat, not that of
\> > stat. Presumably because it's possible to build symlink-following code
\> > on top of non-following code, but not the other way around.
\>
\> DirEntry methods will remain free (no syscall) for directories and
\> regular files. One extra syscall will be needed only for symlinks,
\> which are more rare than other file types (for example, you wrote "
\> Windows typically makes little use of symlinks").

The info we want for scandir is that of the \*link itself\*. That makes it easy to implement things like the "followlinks" flag of os.walk. The \*far end\* of the link isn't relevant at this level.

The docs just need to be clear that DirEntry objects always match lstat(), never stat().

Cheers,
Nick.

>
\> See my pseudo-code:
\> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2014-July/135439.html
\>
\> On Windows, \_lstat and \_stat attributes will be filled directly in the
\> constructor on Windows for regular files and directories.
\>
\> Victor
\> \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
\> Python-Dev mailing list
\> Python-Dev@python.org
\> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
\> Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/ncoghlan%40gmail.com