FileSystem should not name files with java.io.File
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Key: HADOOP-129
URL: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-129
Project: Hadoop
Type: Improvement
Components: fs
Versions: 0.1.1, 0.1.0
Reporter: Doug Cutting
Fix For: 0.2
In Hadoop's FileSystem API, files are currently named using java.io.File. This
is confusing, as many methods on that class are inappropriate to call on Hadoop
paths. For example, calling isDirectory(), exists(), etc. on a java.io.File is
not the same as calling FileSystem.isDirectory() or FileSystem.exists() passing
that same file. Using java.io.File also makes correct operation on Windows
difficult, since java.io.File operates differently on Windows in order to
accomodate Windows path names. For example, new File("/foo") is not absolute
on Windows, and prints its path as "\\foo", which causes confusion.
To fix this we could replace the uses of java.io.File in the FileSystem API
with String, a new FileName class, or perhaps java.net.URI. The advantage of
URI is that it can also naturally include the namenode host and port. The
disadvantage is that URI does not support tree operations like getParent().
This change will cause a lot of incompatibility. Thus it should probably be
made early in a development cycle in order to maximize the time for folks to
adapt to it.
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