Python Virtual File System: A spike test

[Mike C. Fletcher]

Purpose:

A class for representing file system paths which supports both 
method-based operations, and abstraction through object encapsulation to 
eventually allow for Virtual File System operations (for instance, 
transparently accessing the contents of zip files).

Status:

An initial implementation (spike test) exploring the viability of the 
approach.  Implementation provides:

	equality testing
	parent/child/ancestor/descendent retrieval/testing
	filesystem-role testing (file/dir/root)
	root retrieval and root comparisons
	"walking" (callback-based recursive iteration)
	listing (returning Paths which include their parent directory)
	fragment determination (i.e. c:\\temp\\test -> "c:\\", "temp", "test"
	recursive directory-tree removal (including files)
	open( ) method for path specifiers

The current implementation is a sub-class of str which provides a number 
of new methods (and overrides some built-in methods) to provide the 
above functionality.

Future:

If there is interest, I am planning on creating a new SourceForge 
project with the eventual goal of creating a virtual file system package 
with a consistent interface to most of the major file-and-directory 
systems (zip files, FTP sites, local file systems) and hooks for adding 
new systems.

Of course, it would be considerably better for such a project if the 
standard library returned Path objects, rather than simple strings, but 
I'm not particularly interested in trying to get the project accepted 
into the core at the moment (after all, this is just a test).

Request:

If you're interested in working on such a project (or even using it), 
let me know, so I can decide whether to devote any more resources to it.


You can find the module here:

http://members.rogers.com/mcfletch/programming/filepath.py

Enjoy yourselves,
Mike

_______________________________________
   Mike C. Fletcher
   http://members.rogers.com/mcfletch/