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

[Brett Cannon]

On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 at 15:22 Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 10:50 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> > Ah, but you see that doesn't make porting easy. If I have a bunch of
> > path-manipulating code using os.path already and I want to add support
> for
> > pathlib I can either (a) rewrite all of that path-manipulating code to
> work
> > using pathlib, or (b) simply call `path = os.fspath(path)` and be done
> with
> > it. Basically if you have written any code that uses os.path then you
> will
> > have to care about (a) or (b) as a way to add support for pathlib short
> of
> > the `str(path)` hack we're all working to get away from. And if people
> truly
> > liked option (a) then this conversation wouldn't be such a big deal as we
> > would have seen more people using pathlib already (yes, the provisional
> tag
> > may have scared some off, but my guess is it's more from not wanting to
> > rewrite os.path-using code).
> >
> > Now if you can convince me that the use of bytes paths is very minimal
> and
> > thus people doing path manipulations with them will be a very small
> minority
> > then I'm happy to try and use this to keep pushing people towards
> avoiding
> > bytes for file paths. But over the years people such as yourself,
> Stephen,
> > have convinced me that people do some really crazy stuff with their file
> > systems and that it isn't isolated to just one or two people. And so it
> > becomes this situation where we need to ask ourselves if we are going to
> > tell them to just deal with it or help them transition.
> >
> > The other way to convince me is that people needing to support older
> > versions of Python will use `path = path.__fspath__() if hasattr(path,
> > '__fspath__') else path` and that allowing bytes with that idiom is
> going to
> > cost them dearly. My current assumption is that it won't because people
> > using that idiom are using os.path and those functions will complain when
> > mixing str and bytes together, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.
> >
> > I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I understand the desire to get
> > people to get the bytes path habit, but to me the best way will be to get
> > people quickly and easily transitioned over to pathlib as a carrot rather
> > than using the lack of bytes path support in this transition as a stick.
>
> Perhaps I missed previous discussion on the point, but why not support
> both __fspath__() -> str and __fssyspath__() -> bytes?  Returning
> NotImplemented would indicate "try the other one".  For example,
> DirEntry.__fspath__() would return NotImplemented when the underlying
> value is bytes and vice-versa.
>

It was deemed more complexity than necessary for the protocol to have two
functions. Either __fspath__ will be polymorphic or it will only return str.
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