[Python-ideas] BetterWalk, a better and faster os.walk() for Python

[John Mulligan]

> On Sunday, November 25, 2012 01:47:05 PM Nick Coghlan wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Andrew Barnert <abarnert at yahoo.com> 
wrote:
> > 
> > This can only be implemented on platforms that support the *at functions. 
I
> > believe that means just linux and OpenBSD right now, other *BSD (including 
OS X)
> > at some unspecified point in the future. Putting something like that in the
> > stdlib would probably require also adding another function like 
os_supports_at
> > (similar to supports_fd, supports_dirfd, etc.), but that's not a big deal.
> > 
> 
> FWIW, if "supports_dirfd" is non-empty, you can be pretty sure that the 
underlying OS supports the *at APIs, as that's how the dirfd argument gets 
used by the affected functions.
> 

When I realized that Python 3.3 listdir already supports a file descriptor 
argument I had to go back to the docs and read this section over again! I have 
not used Python 3 in anger yet so even though I've read the new docs before I 
find it easy to overlook things. 

This means that (for my use cases at least) all that Python 3.3 is missing are 
the extra pieces of data in the direntry structure. I don't know if anyone 
else is interested in this particular low-level feature but if we were to come 
up with an interface that works well for both posix/windows I think the 
os.walk case (both walk and fwalk now) is much easier to deal with.