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Luis Norambuena @programming.dev

6mo ago

Python's pathlib module

www.pythonmorsels.com

Python's pathlib module

via https://mastodon.social/@treyhunner/113504959975116212

10 comments

Path objects also override the / operator to join paths
This is both cool and gross... gives me C++ vibes (operator overloading abuse).
- A great joy when working with people on a combination of Windows/MacOS/Linux.
  Hell, even great when your laptop is windows and desktop (or even raspberry pi) is Linux
- Scapy is another library where they redefined / to layer packets, such that you can write:
  
  IP(dst="172.23.34.45") / UDP() / DNS(…)
  Then Scapy has magic so that on serialisation, the UDP layer knows defaults to dport=53 if the upper layer is DNS, and it can access the lower layer to compute its checksum.
  And don't forget that strings have a custom % (as in modulo) operator for formatting:
  
  "Hello %s" %(username)
  Of course in modern Python, f-strings will almost always be more convenient
- They could have chosen a better operator. But the functionality is fantastic. Makes working with paths so much easier. And you can even use slashes on windows paths.
  
  It makes the code so much more clean and readable since you're dropping multiple levels of brackets , for example
  os.path.join( a, b, os.path.dirname(c))
  Becomes
  a / b / c.parent
  I really like it

Nice, mypath.open() is a more semantic alternative to open(my path)
- Don't forget about the helper functions mypath.read_text() and mypath.write_text(content)
  
  that's already in the cheatsheet
- Today I realised, we all prefer semantics matching oriental language semantics.
  English: Open my path.
  Same sentence in Hindi semantics would be: My path open.

10 comments