On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 6:26 PM Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 at 09:17, Todd <toddr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 5:00 PM Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > >> On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 at 06:50, Todd <toddr...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > > >> > Currently, pathlib supports pretty much all common filesystem > operations. You can create, move, and delete both files and directories. > One big omission is copying. You need shutil for that. > >> > > >> > Whatever the original intent might have been behind pathlib, it is > now effectively the standard tool for filesystem operations. As such, > excluding copying alone from basic operations creates an unnecessary hurdle > for users. It also increases the difficulty of doing such operations since > there is no hint within the pathlib documentation on how to copy, new users > basically need to google it to find out. That is fine for less common > operations, but far from ideal from a basic one like copying. > >> > > >> > >> Ah. I would look at solving this the other way: since this really > >> isn't a path operation (in the same sense that moving/renaming and > >> deleting are), keep it in shutil, but improve discoverability with a > >> docs reference. > >> > >> ChrisA > > > > > > How is it any less of a "path operation" than moving files, reading and > writing files, making directories, and deleting files? > > At a file system level, those are nothing more than directory entry > manipulation. (Reading and writing might count as slightly more than > that, but practicality beats purity.) Copying a file involves a lot > more work, and is not a simple operation done in the directory entry, > so it's more of a separate tool. Yes, and I would say practically copying a file is at least as much a valid part of pathlib as basic file/io. File i/o is a builtin for python, so putting it pathlib is even less useful than copying, which requires a separate import. > Also, not everyone agrees on what > "copying" means, so there'll be various platform-specific concepts. > But Python already has such a tool, we are simply exposing it in a more convenient way. > In theory, you could take literally every possible action that could > be done on a file and make it into a Path method. Do we need a method > to read a .WAV file and return its headers, or is that better left in > the 'wave' module? There's a reason that huge slabs of Python are > built on protocols rather than methods. Assuming that shutil.copyfile > accepts Path objects (and if it doesn't, that should definitely be > fixed), is it really a problem for the Path objects to not have a copy > method? > Operating on specific file types (other than text files) is not considered a core filesystem operation in any operating system I know. In contrast copying is, such as in UNIX 1, Multics, PC-DOS 1.0, and OS/2. Again, whatever the original intent behind pathlib was, its effective use today is as the primary recommended way to deal with basic file operations. >From what I can tell, copying is pretty much universally treated as a basic file operation in pretty much every major operating system.
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