[Python-ideas] PEP 428 - object-oriented filesystem paths

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 14 Oct 2012 07:50:06 -0700
Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > On 14/10/12 22:03, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> >> On Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:48:59 +1100
> >> Steven D'Aprano<steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Ah, I wondered if anyone else had picked up on that. When I read the 
> >>> PEP,
> >>> I was concerned about the mental conflict between iteration and 
> >>> indexing
> >>> of Path objects: given a Path p the sequence p[0] p[1] p[2] ... does
> >>> something completely different from iterating over p directly.
> >>
> >> p[0] p[1] etc. are just TypeErrors:
> >
> >
> > Ah, my mistake... I didn't register that you sequenced over the parts
> > attribute, not the path itself. Sorry for the noise.
> >
> >
> >
> 
> I actually prefer Steven's interpretation. If we are going to iterate 
> directly on a path object, we should be yeilding the pieces of the path 
> object.
> After all, a path can contain a file name (most of mine do) and 
> what sense does it make to iterate over the children of 
> /usr/home/ethanf/some_table.dbf?

Well, given that:

1. sequence access (including the iterator protocol) to the path's
parts is already provided through the ".parts" property

2. it makes little sense to actually iterate over those parts (what
operations are you going to do sequentially over '/', then 'home', then
'ethanf', etc.?)

... I think yielding the directory contents is a much more useful
alternative when iterating over the path itself.

Regards

Antoine.


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