2006/3/15, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org>:
>
> On 15-Mar-06, at 10:32 AM, Tom Phoenix wrote:
>
> > On 3/15/06, nelson - <nelson1977 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>     i can't figure out how to test the existance of a file.
> >
> > You can ask the directory whether it contains the file, if you send
> > #fileExists: to an instance of FileDirectory.
> >
> >     FileDirectory default fileExists: SmalltalkImage current
> > sourcesName
>
> You can also use
>         FileStream isAFileNamed:myfilenameinfull
>
> or if you already know the directory for some reason
>         myDirectory isAFileNamed: localfilename
>
> To be honest they're all awful. The fileExists: version actually
> takes your path, splits it to work out which directory to pretend to
> make, then reads *all* the filenames in that directory and then
> scanns the list for a string match with the purported filename.  The
> isAFileNamed: version - aside from having a terrible name - actually
> *opens the file* to try to get a prim fail asa way of deciding the
> file doesn't exist. Good Grief.
>
> We've been pontificating about Doing Something About This for a long
> time. Lack of time available for the people that feel they have
> better ideas (that would be people like me and Cees for example, the
> IO Team)has so far prevented any real progress.

To be honest I found out that the combination of OSProcess and *nix
tools (cp, stat, test, ...) works much better for tasks such as
querying filesize, querying file existence, copying large (15 MB)
files than "the Squeak way".

Cheers
Philippe