Alternative directory/file classes?
Bert Freudenberg
bert at freudenbergs.de
Mon Mar 12 13:47:17 UTC 2007
On Mar 12, 2007, at 14:12 , Keith Hodges wrote:
> Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>
>> Well, I wouldn't call it a refactoring - it's not meant to replace
>> the "real" directory classes, is it?
> Dear Bert,
>
> it most definitely IS meant to replace the "real" directory
> classes. A quote from the class comment:
>
> "A Rio is an experimental version of ruby's rio in smalltalk, so
> as to compare with other approaches such as Fileman, the
> intention being to murder FileDirectory!"
Cool. Rio in Ruby appears to be just a convenience library, so excuse
my misunderstanding.
> building on a base with lots of methods. If you begin from scratch,
> it turns out that most of the interesting functionality is layered
> on top of one method. (currently called #on:recusively:select:)
Well, FileDirectory perhaps does too much, hence a lot of code. The
"interesting" functionally would have to be defined. One non-obvious
functionality is that it is polymorphic with ServerDirectory. That's
the foundation why tools like FileList work on files as well as
remote locations transparently. I'd expect the same from a replacement.
In any case, if this is not just a convenience wrapper, I'd certainly
give it an intention-revealing name in best Smalltalk tradition
rather than an arbitrary fantasy name.
> Unfortunately I do not have access to a windows machine at the
> moment so I may need some help to make this fly.
Cross-platform file support has been a real pain in the past, mostly
because users usually only develop on one platform and unconsciously
use platform-dependent strings for filenames. I've been working with
the URI package lately (http://www.squeaksource.com/URI.html) which
is a real pleasure because it just does the Right Thing when taking
your code from one platform to the next.
- Bert -
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