[Python-ideas] 'from os.path import FILE, DIR' or internal structure of filenames

[anatoly techtonik]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 2:26 AM, Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> wrote:
> On 28Sep2013 08:19, anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com> wrote:
> | FILE = os.path.abspath(__file__)
> | DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
> | ?
> |
> | Repeated pattern for referencing resources relative to your scripts. Ideas
> | about alternative names / locations are welcome.
> |
> | In PHP these are __FILE__ and __DIR__. For Python 3 adding __dir__ is
> | impossible, because the name clashes with __dir__ method (which is not
> | implemented for module object, but should be [ ] for consistency). Also
> | current __file__ is rarely absolute path, because it is never normalized [
> | ].
>
> Maybe I'm grumpy this morning (though I felt the same reading this yesterday).
>
> -1 for any names commencing with __ (or even _).
>
> -1 for new globals.
>
> -1 because I can imagine wanting different nuances on the definitions
>    above; in particular for DIR I can well imagine wanting bare
>    dirname(abspath(FILE)) - semanticly different to your construction.
>    There's lots of scope for bikeshedding here.
>
> -1 because this is trivial trival code.
>
> -1 because you can do all this with relative paths anyway, no need for abspath
>
> -1 because I can imagine being unable to compute abspath in certain
>     circumstances ( certainly on older UNIX systems you could be
>     inside a directory without sufficient privileges to walk back
>     up the tree for getcwd and its equivalents )
>
> -0 for adding some kind of convenience functions to importlib(?) for this
>      (+0 except that I can see heaps of bikeshedding)

With all -1 above, what is your preferred way to refer to resources
that are places into subdirectories of your script directory?
--
anatoly t.