I just read over the changes to the proposed Path class since the discussion last summer. A big thanks to Bjorn Lindqvist for writing a PEP, Jason Orendorff for the original path.py and his suggestions on how the Path class should be different, and the writers of the Python-Dev Summary for bringing the discussion to my attention. I've been testing/using the interim Path class in the Python subversion (/sandbox/trunk/path, last modified in September), and have a few comments about PEP 355:
- .walk*() return a list rather than an iterator. Was this an intentional change or a typo? Most typical uses yield thousands of paths which do not need to be in memory simultaneously. - An equivalent to os.listdir() is frequently useful in applications. This would return a list of filenames (strings) without the parent info. Path.listdir() calls os.listdir() and wraps all the items into Paths, and then I have to unwrap them again, which seems like a waste. I end up calling os.listdir(my_path) instead. If we decide not to subsume many os.* functions into Path, that's fine, but if we deprecate os.listdir(), it's not. - -1 on removing .joinpath(), whatever it's called. Path(basepath, *args) is good but not the same. (1) it's less intuitive: I expect this to be a method on a directory. (2) the class name is hardcoded: do I really have to do self.__class__(self, *args) to make my code forward compatible with whatever nifty subclasses might appear? - +1 on renaming .directory back to .parent. - -1 on losing a 1-liner to read/iterate a file's contents. This is a frequent operation, and having to write a 2-liner or a custom function is a pain. - +1 on consolidating mkdir/makedirs and rmdir/rmdirs. I'd also suggest not raising an error if the operation is already done, and a .purge() method that deletes recursively no matter what it is. This was suggested last summer as a rename for my .delete_dammit() proposal. Unsure what to do if permission errors prevent the operation; I guess propagating the exception is best. This would make .rmtree() redundant, which chokes if the item is a file. - +1 for rationalizing .copy*(). - +1 for .chdir(). This is a frequent operation, and it makes no sense not to include it. -- Mike Orr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ([EMAIL PROTECTED] address is semi-reliable) _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
