[Python-Dev] Adding the 'path' module (was Re: Some RFE for review)

[Just van Rossum]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> At 03:45 PM 6/27/2005 -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> >We're getting enough discussion about various aspects of Jason's
> >path module that perhaps a PEP is warranted.  All this discussion on
> >python-dev is just going to get lost.
> 
> AFAICT, the only unresolved issue outstanding is a compromise or
> Pronouncement regarding the atime/ctime/mtime members' datatype. 
> This is assuming, of course, that making the "empty path" be
> os.curdir doesn't receive any objections, and that nobody strongly
> prefers 'path.fromcwd()' over 'path.cwd()' as the alternate
> constructor name.
> 
> Apart from these fairly minor issues, there is a very short to-do
> list, small enough to do an implementation patch in an evening or
> two.  Documentation might take a similar amount of time after that;
> mostly it'll be copy-paste from the existing os.path docs, though.
> 
> As for the open issues, if we can't reach some sane compromise about
> atime/ctime/mtime, I'd suggest just providing the stat() method and
> let people use stat().st_mtime et al.  Alternately, I'd be okay with
> creating last_modified(), last_accessed(), and created_on() methods
> that return datetime objects, as long as there's also
> atime()/mtime()/ctime() methods that return timestamps.

My issues with the 'path' module (basically recapping what I've said on
the subject in the past):

  - It inherits from str/unicode, so path object have many str methods
    that make no sense for paths.
  - On OSX, it inherits from str instead of unicode, due to
    http://python.org/sf/767645
  - I don't like __div__ overloading for join().

Just