[Python-ideas] More friendly access to chmod

[Joao S. O. Bueno]

If you are doing it OO and trying to create a human-usable API, then,
why the hell to stick with
octal and string representations from the 1970's?

path.chmod.executable could return a named-tuple-like object, with
owner=True, group=False, all=False  - and conversely, you could have
path.chmod.owner to return (read=True, write=True, execute=True)

Ad thus one could simply do:
if path.chmod.owner.writable:
    ...

On 11 January 2016 at 10:29, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 11:02 PM, Ram Rachum <ram at rachum.com> wrote:
>> Here's my new preferred API. Assume that `path` is a `pathlib.Path` object.
>>
>>         Checking the chmod of the file:
>>             int(path.chmod) # Get an int 393 which in octal is 0o611
>>             oct(path.chmod) # Get a string '0o611'
>>             str(path.chmod) # Get a string 'rw-r--r--'
>>             repr(path.chmod) # Get a string '<Chmod: rw-r--r-- / 0o611>
>>
>>         Modifying the chmod of the file:
>>             path.chmod(0o611) # Set chmod to 0o611 (for backward
>> compatibility)
>>             path.chmod = 0o611 # Set chmod to 0o611
>>             path.chmod = 393 # Set chmod to 0o611, which is 393 in decimal
>>             path.chmod = other_path.chmod # Set chmod to be the same as that
>> of some other file
>>             path.chmod = 'rw-r--r--' # Set chmod to 0o611
>>             path.chmod += '--x--x--x' # Add execute permission to everyone
>>             path.chmod -= '----rwx' # Remove all permissions from others
>>
>> I've chosen += and -=, despite the fact they're not set operations, because
>> Python doesn't have __inand__. On an unrelated note, maybe we should have
>> __inand__? (I mean x ^~= y)
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>
> The one thing I'd do differently is call it "mode" or "permissions"
> rather than "chmod" (CHange MODe), and drop the callability. If you're
> going to do it as property assignment, making that property also be
> callable feels awkward (plus it'll be a pain to implement). But
> otherwise, yeah! Looks great!
>
> ChrisA
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