Re: Pathname#walk for traversing path nodes (patch)

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, mathew wrote:

> David A. Black wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, mathew wrote:
>> 
>>> ES wrote:
>>> 
>>>> The absolute best name would be simply #each (incidentally, looks like
>>>> it would be available). That failing, #walk, #traverse or #each_node.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I'd like to suggest "descend", because it's really descending into the 
>>> path provided.
>> 
>> 
>> The thing is, though, it isn't really descending.  The path may not
>> even exist.  It's just moving from left to right through a bunch of
>> tokens, which may or may not correspond to a real filesystem.  If it
>> were really a full traversal, you'd get:
>> 
>>   a
>>   a/b
>>   a/b/c
>>   a/b/c/d
>
>
> Digging into the archive for the original example:
>
>> Pathname.new('/path/to/some/file.rb').walk {|dir| p dir}
>>    #<Pathname:/path>
>>    #<Pathname:/path/to>
>>    #<Pathname:/path/to/some>
>>    #<Pathname:/path/to/some/file.rb>

Whoops.  I got that all screwed up in my mind.  Never mind, then....
though I do think that "descend" suggests to strongly the actual
traversal of a filesystem.  If it's not supposed to be that, but just
to be in recognition of the "descent" of the elements of the path,
then every method that followed that kind of traversal would be called
"descend", which I don't think they should be.


David

P.S. Upside-down trees: it's not just computer scientists; family
trees are upside-down too.  Sometimes even sideways....

-- 
David A. Black
[e-mail]