[Python-Dev] PEP 471 -- os.scandir() function -- a better and faster directory iterator

[Jonas Wielicki]

On 27.06.2014 00:59, Ben Hoyt wrote:
> Specifics of proposal
> =====================
> [snip] Each ``DirEntry`` object has the following
> attributes and methods:
> [snip]
> Notes on caching
> ----------------
> 
> The ``DirEntry`` objects are relatively dumb -- the ``name`` attribute
> is obviously always cached, and the ``is_X`` and ``lstat`` methods
> cache their values (immediately on Windows via ``FindNextFile``, and
> on first use on Linux / OS X via a ``stat`` call) and never refetch
> from the system.

I find this behaviour a bit misleading: using methods and have them
return cached results. How much (implementation and/or performance
and/or memory) overhead would incur by using property-like access here?
I think this would underline the static nature of the data.

This would break the semantics with respect to pathlib, but they’re only
marginally equal anyways -- and as far as I understand it, pathlib won’t
cache, so I think this has a fair point here.

regards,
jwi