From: Kevin Smith <kevinbsmith@...>
Date: 2001-10-28T09:16:48+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23655] Re: Path class (was: Re: FileSpec vs Dir/File class methods)

--- Michael Witrant <mike@lepton.fr> wrote:
> You can find a first try there:
> http://www.lepton.fr/ruby/path.rb

Cool.

> The Path class inherits from String and implements:

I'm curious why you chose to extend String, rather than
just contain a String. Do you really want/expect to be able
to perform every String operation on a Path object? 

What if you're on a Mac, where (as I probably misunderstand
it), it's difficult to represent an entire pathspec in a
single string?

>    - #/(other)
>        like #join(other)

Not sure if I like this or if it scares me (or both).

> A new method String#path converts a String to a Path.

I would rather just do Path.new(string) than clutter up
String itself.

> - Should Path#delete call Dir.rmdir if the path is a
> directory and   File.delete otherwise?
>   For now it just calls File.delete. You must call
> Path#rmdir to   remove a directory.

Perhaps you could have:
#delete (deletes files, no effect for directories)
#rmdir (deletes directories, no effect on files)
#delete! (deletes file OR directory)

I can't think of a better name than #delete! but there
probably is one.

> - Using this class instead of builtins adds at least one
> extra call per
>   method. Maybe should it be converted to a faster C
> module?

For me, I'm already doing disk operations, so I'm not that
concerned about speed. Having it in Ruby is nicer, I think.

> - Should #join (and #/) remove duplicate slashes?
>   ie: '/bar/'.path.join('foo') => '/bar//foo' or
> '/bar/foo'?
>   File::join does not.

Wow. I would have thought that would be the main reason
join would exist. Yes, I think it should remove duplicate
slashes (except if it handles things like
"file://c:/config.sys" or "\\MyWinBox\MyShare\file"

> - Would a #rmtree method be nice? It would act like
> #delete, but remove
>   the entire directory tree if it exists. Like 'rm -fr'.

Yes. Dangerous, but extremely handy.

> - Should it provide a way make all strings behave like a
> Path? And how?

No.

Thanks for doing this! Nice work.

Kevin

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