From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2001-10-27T06:13:23+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23533] Re: FileSpec vs Dir/File class methods

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:23427] FileSpec vs Dir/File class methods"
    on 01/10/26, Keith Hodges <K.Hodges@ftel.co.uk> writes:

|I would like to know whether there is a good reason for the current design of
|the File and Dir classes that use class methods for most of their operations,
|the only reason I can think of is that for some reason it is more economical to
|use strings for filenames rather than have a class that instanciates potential
|files.

Yes.  Strngs are strings.  I believe there's good reason to separate
strings and files in roles.

|I always have this nagging feeling that I am doing too much work when handling
|lists of files since Dir.entries returns a list of filenames that need to be
|reunited with their directory path to be useful.

Use 'find'. ;-)

|Have a FileSpec, DirSpec, UrlSpec classes whose instances specify a potential
|directory/file or url, whether it exists or not.

||'/usr/aDirectory'.fileSpec.exists?
|'/usr/aDirectory'.fileSpec.directory?
|'/usr/aDirectory'.fileSpec.fileEntries { | fileSpec | fileSpec.open { | file
|| file each { | line | puts line} } }
|fs = '/usr/aDirectory/aFile'.fileSpec
|fs.touch unless fs.exists?

I'm not sure how useful they are than conterparts:

  File.exist?('/usr/aDirectory')
  File.directory?('/usr/aDirectory')
  Dir.foreach('/usr/aDirectory') {|fn|
    File.foreach('/usr/aDirectory/'+fn) {|line|
      puts line
    }
  }
  fn = '/usr/aDirectory/aFile'
  # oops, we don't have File.touch
  File.open(fn, "w").close unless File.exist?(fn)

except for the fact (that you mentioned) that Dir.entries returns a
list of filenames that need to be reunited with their directory path.
Maybe it's enough to have a method returns full path of directory
entries.

							matz.