Totally agree!

-Thorsten

> Am 24.08.2017 um 20:06 schrieb Jean-Daniel via swift-evolution 
> <[email protected]>:
> 
> Yes, and a URI class that don’t provide any FS operations, but only take care 
> of proper URI parsing and building.
> 
>> Le 23 août 2017 à 12:03, Jakob Egger via swift-evolution 
>> <[email protected]> a écrit :
>> 
>> I would absolutely love to see an API like AbsolutePath / RelativePath for 
>> file system operations!
>> 
>>> On 22. Aug 2017, at 21:02, Dave DeLong via swift-evolution 
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I suppose, if you squint at it weirdly.
>>> 
>>> My current Path API is a “Path” protocol, with “AbsolutePath” and 
>>> “RelativePath” struct versions. The protocol defines a path to be an array 
>>> of path components. The only real difference between an AbsolutePath and a 
>>> RelativePath is that all file system operations would only take an 
>>> AbsolutePath. A URL would also only provide an AbsolutePath as its “path” 
>>> bit.
>>> 
>>> public enum PathComponent {
>>>     case this // “."
>>>     case up   // “..” 
>>>     case item(name: String, extension: String?)
>>> }
>>> 
>>> public protocol Path {   
>>>     var components: Array<PathComponent> { get }
>>>     init(_ components: Array<PathComponent>) // used on protocol extensions 
>>> that mutate paths, such as appending components
>>> }
>>> 
>>> public struct AbsolutePath: Path { }
>>> public struct RelativePath: Path { }
>>> 
>>> By separating out the concept of an Absolute and a Relative path, I can put 
>>> additional functionality on each one to make semantic sense (you cannot 
>>> concatenate two absolute paths, but you can concat any path with a relative 
>>> path, for example). Or all file system operations must take an 
>>> AbsolutePath. 
>>> 
>>> One of the key things I realized is that a “Path” type should not be 
>>> ExpressibleByStringLiteral, because you cannot statically determine if a 
>>> Path should be absolute or relative. However, one of the initializers for 
>>> an AbsolutePath would handle things like expanding a tilde, and both types 
>>> try to reduce a set of components as much as possible (by filtering out 
>>> “.this” components, and handling “.up” components where possible, etc). 
>>> Also in my experience, it’s fairly rare to want to deal with a 
>>> known-at-compile-time, hard-coded path. Usually you’re dealing with paths 
>>> relative to known “containers” that are determined at runtime (current 
>>> user’s home folder, app’s sandboxed documents directory, etc).
>>> 
>>> Another thing I’ve done is that no direct file system operations exist on 
>>> AbsolutePath (like “.exists” or “.createDirectory(…)” or whatever); those 
>>> are still on FileManager/FileHandle/etc in the form of extensions to handle 
>>> the new types. In my app, a path is just a path, and it only has meaning 
>>> based on the thing that is using it. An AbsolutePath for a URL is used 
>>> differently than an AbsolutePath on a file system, although they are 
>>> represented with the same “AbsolutePath” type.
>>> 
>>> I’m not saying this is a perfect API of course, or even that a hypothetical 
>>> stdlib-provided Path should mimic this. I’m just saying that for my 
>>> use-case, this has vastly simplified how I deal with paths, because both 
>>> URL and String smell really bad for what I’m doing.
>>> 
>>> Dave
>>> 
>>>> On Aug 22, 2017, at 12:37 PM, Taylor Swift <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> So are you saying we need three distinct “URI” types for local-absolute, 
>>>> local-relative, and remote? That’s a lot of API surface to support.
>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:24 PM, Dave DeLong <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> I completely agree. URL packs a lot of punch, but IMO it’s the wrong 
>>>>> abstraction for file system paths.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I maintain an app that deals a lot with file system paths, and using URL 
>>>>> has always felt cumbersome, but String is the absolute wrong type to use. 
>>>>> Lately as I’ve been working on it, I’ve been experimenting with a 
>>>>> concrete “Path” type, similar to PathKit 
>>>>> (https://github.com/kylef/PathKit/). Working in terms of AbsolutePath and 
>>>>> RelativePath (what I’ve been calling things) has been extremely 
>>>>> refreshing, because it allows me to better articulate the kind of data 
>>>>> I’m dealing with. URL doesn’t handle pure-relative paths very well, and 
>>>>> it’s always a bit of a mystery how resilient I need to be about checking 
>>>>> .isFileURL or whatever. All the extra properties (port, user, password, 
>>>>> host) feel hugely unnecessary as well.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Dave
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Aug 20, 2017, at 11:23 PM, Félix Cloutier via swift-evolution 
>>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm not convinced that URLs are the appropriate abstraction for a file 
>>>>>> system path. For the record, I'm not a fan of existing Foundation 
>>>>>> methods that create objects from an URL. There is a useful and 
>>>>>> fundamental difference between a local path and a remote path, and 
>>>>>> conflating the two has been a security pain point in many languages and 
>>>>>> frameworks that allow it. Examples include remote file inclusion in PHP 
>>>>>> and malicious doctypes in XML. Windows also had its share of issues with 
>>>>>> UNC paths.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Even when loading an arbitrary URL looks innocuous, many de-anonymizing 
>>>>>> hacks work by causing a program to access an URL controlled by an 
>>>>>> attacker to make it disclose the user's IP address or some other 
>>>>>> identifier.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> IMO, this justifies that there should be separate types to handle local 
>>>>>> and remote resources, so that at least developers have to be explicit 
>>>>>> about allowing remote resources. This makes a new URL type less 
>>>>>> necessary towards supporting file I/O.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Félix
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Le 20 août 2017 à 21:37, Taylor Swift via swift-evolution 
>>>>>>> <[email protected]> a écrit :
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Okay so a few days ago there was a discussion about getting pure swift 
>>>>>>> file system support into Foundation or another core library, and in my 
>>>>>>> opinion, doing this requires a total overhaul of the `URL` type (which 
>>>>>>> is currently little more than a wrapper for NSURL), so I’ve just 
>>>>>>> started a pure Swift URL library project at 
>>>>>>> <https://github.com/kelvin13/url>.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The library’s parsing and validation core (~1K loc pure swift) is 
>>>>>>> already in place and functional; the goal is to eventually support all 
>>>>>>> of the Foundation URL functionality.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The new `URL` type is implemented as a value type with utf8 storage 
>>>>>>> backed by an array buffer. The URLs are just 56 bytes long each, so 
>>>>>>> they should be able to fit into cache lines. (NSURL by comparison is 
>>>>>>> over 128 bytes in size; it’s only saved by the fact that the thing is 
>>>>>>> passed as a reference type.)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> As I said, this is still really early on and not a mature library at 
>>>>>>> all but everyone is invited to observe, provide feedback, or contribute!
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> swift-evolution mailing list
>>>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>>>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>>>>>> 
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