on 22.07.2005 16:14 George Sakkis said the following: > "Duncan Booth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>Personally I think the concept of a specific path type is a good one, but >>subclassing string just cries out to me as the wrong thing to do. In other >>words, to me a path represents something in a filesystem, the fact that it >>has one, or indeed several string representations does not mean that the >>path itself is simply a more specific type of string. >> [snip] > practicality-vs-purity decision. You're right, conceptually a path > HAS_A string description, not IS_A string, so from a pure OO point of > view, it should not inherit string.
Java has `File` which mixes the concepts "an object in the filesystem" and "a structured locator for such objects (in a hierarchical fs) that might or might not correspond to an object that is actually there". `file` and `path` separate that. I think this is very reasonable. (It would be nice to get `path`(s) easily from a `file`, at the moment there is only file.name if I'm not mistaken). And a `path`, to me, actually IS_A string (unicode string) that happens to have special behaviour (such as os dependent quirks like a pathseparator that automatically get translated, comparable to '\n' used internally in strings translated to '\n'|'\r\n') stefan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
