glyph@divmod.com wrote:
I'm actually sort of liking this idea. A Pathname class, for convenience a subtype of String, but containing the underlying binary representation used by the OS. Even non-unicode pathnames could be represented.
On the one hand, I agree with you - except for the part where it's a subtype of String, that doesn't work. In case I haven't mentioned it enough times already:
http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/8.1.0/api/twisted.python.filepath.FilePat...
On the other hand, we've all been on this merry-go-round before:
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0355/
Note especially the rejection notice: "Subclassing from str is a particularly bad idea".
Yes, the only real justification for it is to not break existing code (otherwise, calling str() is not that much of an ordeal).
On the other hand, we've all been on this merry-go-round before:
The very existence of os.path seems a good argument that something like this is useful. Perhaps PEP 355 just went too far. Bill