[Python-Dev] Pathlib enhancements - acceptable inputs and outputs for __fspath__ and os.fspath()

[Nick Coghlan]

On 14 April 2016 at 17:02, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> But WDOT?  I'd especially like to hear if Nick is tempted to flip-flop
> (so far he's been in the "pathlib is a text utility" camp).

pathlib is too high level (i.e. has too many dependencies) to be used
in low level boundary code.

The use case for returning bytes from __fspath__ is DirEntry, so you
can write things like this in low level code:

    def myscandir(dirpath):
        for entry in os.scandir(dirpath):
            if entry.is_file():
                with open(entry) as f:
                    # do something

and still have them automatically inherit the str/bytes handling of
the core standard library APIs.

By contrast, as soon as you type "import pathlib" at the top of your
file, you've stepped outside the world of potentially pure boundary
code, and are instead dealing with structured application level
objects (which means traversing the bytes->str boundary before the
str->Path one).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia