[Python-Dev] Issue 11406: adding os.scandir(), a directory iterator returning stat-like info (original) (raw)

Christian Heimes christian at python.org
Fri May 10 15:46:21 CEST 2013

Am 10.05.2013 14:16, schrieb Antoine Pitrou:

But what if some systems return more than the file type and less than a full stat result? The general problem is POSIX's terrible inertia. I feel that a stat result with some None fields would be an acceptable compromise here.

POSIX only defines the d_ino and d_name members of struct dirent. Linux, BSD and probably some other platforms also happen to provide d_type. The other members of struct dirent (d_reclen, d_namlen) aren't useful in Python space by themselves.

d_type and st_mode aren't compatible in any way. As you know st_mode also contains POSIX permission information. The file type is encoded with a different set of bits, too. Future file types aren't mapped to S_IF* constants for st_mode.

For d_ino you also need the device number from the directory because the inode is only unique within a device.

I don't really see how to map strut dirent to struct stat on POSIX.

Christian

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