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

Mike Orr sluggoster at gmail.com
Sat May 6 08:29:36 CEST 2006

On 5/5/06, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

Mike Orr wrote: > On 5/4/06, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote: >> (But all the current proposals seem to build on os.path, so maybe I >> should assume otherwise, that os.path will remain indefinitely...) > > They build on os.path because that's what we're familiar with using. > There's no reason to write the platform-specific classes until we > agree on an API; that would just be work down the drain. When the new > classes are in the library, we can: (one or more) > > - Leave os.path.foo() alone because it works and most existing programs need it.

The threading module doesn't really obsolete the thread module, it just provides a higher level, more convenient API. Similarly, I don't believe it's a given that a nice path object will obsolete the low level operations. When translating a shell script to Python (or vice versa), having access to the comparable low level operations would be of benefit.

I think you meant to say Perl in that sentence. In Python there should be one way to do it, and beautiful is better than ugly. The os.path functions are bad enough, but shutil.copy2 is just plain evil. Is it that much of a step to translate:

Y="$(dirname <span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mi>d</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>a</mi><mi>m</mi><mi>e</mi></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">(dirname </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:1em;vertical-align:-0.25em;"></span><span class="mopen">(</span><span class="mord mathnormal">d</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.02778em;">r</span><span class="mord mathnormal">nam</span><span class="mord mathnormal">e</span></span></span></span>X))/lib"

as

y = Path(x).parent.parent + "lib"
y = Path(x).parent.parent.join("lib")
or whatever the syntax do jour is

rather than

y = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(x)), "lib")

?

-- Mike Orr <sluggoster at gmail.com> (mso at oz.net address is semi-reliable)

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