[Python-Dev] Alternative path suggestion (original) (raw)

Gustavo Niemeyer gustavo at niemeyer.net
Thu May 4 18:47:52 CEST 2006

The biggest conceptual change is that my path object is a subclass of ''tuple'', not a subclass of str. For example,

Using tuples is a nice idea! Object paths using tuples is a somewhat common concept. I don't see an immediate reason to be a subclass of tuple, though, as opposed to using it as an internal representation.

{{{ p.normpath() -> Isn't needed - done by the constructor p.basename() -> p[-1] p.splitpath() -> (p[:-1], p[-1]) p.splitunc() -> (p[0], p[1:]) (if isinstance(p[0], path.UNCRoot)) p.splitall() -> Isn't needed p.parent -> p[:-1] p.name -> p[-1] p.drive -> p[0] (if isinstance(p[0], path.Drive)) p.uncshare -> p[0] (if isinstance(p[0], path.UNCRoot))

and of course: p.join(q) [or anything like it] -> p + q }}}

Nice indeed.

The only drawback I can see in using a logical representation is that giving a path object to functions which expect a path string won't work. The immediate solution is to simply use str(p) instead of p. The long-term solution is to make all related functions accept a path object.

Let's use _path.. I mean, generic functions! ;-)

(...)

* A ''relative path'' is a path without a root element, so it can be concatenated to other paths. * An ''absolute path'' is a path whose meaning doesn't change when the current working directory changes.

That sounds right.

== Easier attributes for stat objects ==

The current path objects includes: * isdir, isfile, islink, and - * atime, mtime, ctime, size. (...)

This indeed shouldn't be attributes of path, IMO, since they are operations that depend on the state of the filesystem, and will change behind your back.

I think that isfile, isdir should be kept (along with lisfile, lisdir), since I think that doing what they do is quite common, and requires six lines:

I don't agree. "isdir" is an attribute of the filesystem, not of the path object. I'd never expect that e.g. a network operation could result from accessing an attribute in Python, and that could certainly happen if the path is referencing a network filesystem.

-- Gustavo Niemeyer http://niemeyer.net

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