On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 1:49 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote: > On 2015-05-14, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > >> I'd like to do a little survey, and get a quick show of hands. >> >> How many people have written GUI or text-based applications or >> scripts where a "Move file to trash" function would be useful? > > How would you even define what "move to trash" means in a standard > way? > > Even withing the limited context of something like a mail client, it's > meaning varies depending on mail store format or which IMAP server > you're talking to. > > Or are you assuming the only thing that can be "moved to trash" is a > file?
AIUI this is specifically about files. I have never used such a feature, and generally found them to be more annoying than useful. The times when I want to mark a file for deletion either now or at some undefined time in the future (at the file system's discretion) are approximately zero; either I want the file, or I can delete it immediately. Given that actually-removed files can usually be undeleted if their disk space hasn't been reclaimed, I don't think trash cans really help much. Plus, I think it's a UI insanity when a console program dumps something in the trash, which to me has always felt like a GUI file manager tool. That said, though, I think a standardized API for trashing files is not a bad thing; and it's not something that will need huge API changes, so the costs of feature-freeze would be low. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
