[Python-Dev] Issue 11406: adding os.scandir(), a directory iterator returning stat-like info

[Nick Coghlan]

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 11:46 PM, Christian Heimes <christian at python.org> wrote:
> Am 10.05.2013 14:16, schrieb Antoine Pitrou:
>> But what if some systems return more than the file type and less than a
>> full stat result? The general problem is POSIX's terrible inertia.
>> I feel that a stat result with some None fields would be an acceptable
>> compromise here.
>
> POSIX only defines the d_ino and d_name members of struct dirent. Linux,
> BSD and probably some other platforms also happen to provide d_type. The
> other members of struct dirent (d_reclen, d_namlen) aren't useful in
> Python space by themselves.
>
> d_type and st_mode aren't compatible in any way. As you know st_mode
> also contains POSIX permission information. The file type is encoded
> with a different set of bits, too. Future file types aren't mapped to
> S_IF* constants for st_mode.

Why are we exposing a bitfield as the primary Python level API,
anyway? It makes sense for the well defined permission bits, but why
are we copying the C level concept for the other flags?

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia