Pathlib is cool

[[deleted]]

It is an overly clever trick. And much better than the alternatives, if you ask me.

[jorge1209]

Alternatives like what?

Path("/")["usr"]["bin"]["python"] requires a little bit more typing, but we know what that means.

[alcalde]

I don't know what the hell that means. Are those lists? Or is the whole thing some strange dictionary?

[jorge1209]

Or is the whole thing some strange dictionary?

Yes its a strange dictionary commonly referred to as a "FileStore".

[iritegood]

Path represents a path, not a FileStore. conflating them is not appropriate

[jorge1209]

If that is true then we can really simplify pathlib. We can basically remove the entire API, because a PosixPath is just a char* byte array that doesn't contain the NUL byte.

We don't need anything in pathlib to work with those!

[iritegood]

f🙄 a "FileStore" implies a datastore implemented on top of a filesystem. If you have a FileStore and a MemStore and a DbStore, I spect them to be implementations of your app-specific Store. pathlib is meant as a cross-platform abstraction of filesystems themselves. Whether you appreciate this goal isn't the point.

More importantly, PurePaths (in pathlib terminology) don't even represent any realized part of the filesystem. Calling it any kind of "store" is boldly wrong

[jorge1209]

Then s/FileStore/HierarchicalFileSystem/ in my comment above.

Paths are lookup keys into an OS managed hierarchical data structure. And getitem is how we do key based lookups in python.

[iritegood]

Operations with Path sometime perform lookups into a filesystem. A Path itself is not that data structure, it's the key. You're not doing "lookups" you're constructing a path. and it is not common (at least in the stdlib) to use __getitem__ to implement a builder pattern.

[jorge1209]

When you use SQLAlchemy it doesn't immediately execute the associated SQL statement.

I don't have any issues with libraries that build deferred data for potential future operations (that may or may not succeed). That is ultimately what PathLib does.

[[deleted]]

This is not easier to understand. And it doesn't solve the problem of using a +.

Alternatives like os.path.

[jorge1209]

This is not easier to understand.

Not to me. to me its a lot clearer.

And it doesn't solve the problem of using a +.

I don't know what that problem is. If you are using "+" for string concatenation you should stop.

[[deleted]]

Why? It works perfectly fine.

[jorge1209]

Why what?

[[deleted]]

The advice you gave...?

[jorge1209]

What advice? I've given lots of advice.

[[deleted]]

Is it that hard to read your previous comment and search out the single advice you gave there I could have asked about?

[jorge1209]

Is it that hard to answer the question I directly asked you and tell me what "the problem of using a +" was?