[Python-Dev] pathlib and issue 11406 (a directory iterator returning stat-like info) (original) (raw)

Ben Hoyt benhoyt at gmail.com
Mon Nov 25 20:45:07 CET 2013

OK, so I'm a Windows dev, but my understanding is that dino is useful to tell if two files are identical - hard links to the same physical file have the same dino value. I don't believe it's possible to do this on Windows at all.

I've seen it used in tools like diff, to short-circuit doing the actual diff if you know from a stat that the 2 files are the same.

Okay, that helps -- thanks.

So the inode number is probably not all that useful in this context at all. Because it doesn't come with the device, you don't know whether it's unique (from the posixpath.samestat source, it looks like a file's only unique if the inode and device numbers are equal).

So I think I'm going to drop .dirent entirely, and just expose the d_type information via the is_* functions.

I'm not sure about is_socket(), is_fifo(), is_block_device(), is_char_device(). I'm tempted to just leave them off, as I think they'll basically never be used ... their stat counterparts are exceedingly rare in the stdlib, so if you really want that, just use .lstat().

-Ben

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