[Python-Dev] Maybe, just maybe, pathlib doesn't belong. (original) (raw)

Sven R. Kunze srkunze at mail.de
Tue Apr 12 10:54:03 EDT 2016

On 12.04.2016 12:41, Paul Moore wrote:

As your thoughts appear to have been triggered by my comments, I feel I should clarify.

1. I like pathlib even as it is right now, and I'm strongly -1 on removing it. 2. The "external dependency" aspect of 3rd party solutions makes them far less useful to me. 3. The work on improving integration with the stdlib (which is nearly sorted now, as far as I can see) is a big improvement, and I'm all in favour. But even without it, I wouldn't want pathlib to be removed. 4. There are further improvements that could be made to pathlib, certainly, but again they are optional, and pathlib is fine without them.

My conclusion is that these changes are not optional and tweaking os, io and shutil is just yet another workaround for a clean solution. :)

Just my two cents.

5. I wish more 3rd party code integrated better with pathlib. The improved integration work might help with this. But ultimately, Python 2 compatibility is likely to be the biggest block (either perceived or real - we can make pathlib support as simple as possible, but some 3rd party authors will remain unwilling to add support for Python 3 only features in the short term). This isn't a pathlib problem. 6. There will probably always be a place for low-level os/os.path code. Adding support in those modules for pathlib doesn't affect that fact, but does make it easier to use pathlib "seamlessly", so why not do so?

tl; dr; I'm 100% in favour of pathlib, and in the direction the current discussion (excluding "let's give up on pathlib" digressions) is going.

Best, Sven

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