[Python-Dev] Path PEP and the division operator (original) (raw)

Duncan Booth duncan.booth at suttoncourtenay.org.uk
Sun Feb 5 11:10:08 CET 2006

Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote in news:43E5543B.1080907 at gmail.com:

Duncan Booth wrote:

I'm not convinced by the rationale given why atime,ctime,mtime and size are methods rather than properties but I do find this PEP much more agreeable than the last time I looked at it. A better rationale for doing it is that all of them may raise IOException. It's rude for properties to do that, so it's better to make them methods instead.

Yes, that rationale sounds good to me.

That was a general guideline that came up the first time adding Path was proposed - if the functionality involved querying or manipulating the actual filesystem (and therefore potentially raising IOError), then it should be a method. If the operation related solely to the string representation, then it could be a property.

Perhaps Bjorn could add that to the PEP?

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