So the sqlite test keeps failing on my mac because the sqlite that comes with osx doesn't include the ability to test for if a table exists in a database. So, probably the best thing to do would be to remove the database first before creating it. However, we don't have any handy os-independent filesystem commands. Since we need that anyway, how do you guys think we should implement it? Here's a simple survey of how others do it:
Python and Ocaml: Python throws most it's os interaction into os.py which makes it a bit unwieldy. Ocaml does basically the same thing by putting it all in Unix. I'm betting I don't need to go into too much detail. Since they both implement one main location for everything, some functions aren't implemented, which makes the interface inconsistent. They throw either OSError for python or Unix_error for ocaml on error. [python]: http://docs.python.org/lib/os-file-dir.html [ocaml]: http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/libref/Unix.html Ruby: Ruby puts all of its filesystem routines in one module called FileUtils. It's operations can quite high level. For instance, chdir can optionally take a closure that will cd into the specified directory, run the closure, and cd to the original dir afterwards. Pretty much every function takes one of the following: force, noop, preserve, and verbose. This simplifies having to manually create a lot of these options. One interesting idea is that they have some sub-modules that set default arguments on the operations. For instance, you can use FileUtils::DryRun where it has the same interface as FileUtils but no actual modification of the filesystem will take place. On error, it raises exceptions named after unix's errnor, like Errno::EEXIST and the like. [ruby]: http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/fileutils/rdoc/index.html D: This seems to be similar to Ruby but with less sugar. One nice thing is that instead of presenting a separate glob function, their listdir function is overloaded to accept a glob pattern or a regex. Errors are done by raising a FileException [d]: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/phobos/std_file.html Haskell: It's closer to D than Ruby. The main interesting thing is how errors are done via monads. See the second link for how it works. Since we don't have exceptions, this could be an interesting way to do error handling. Without type inferrence, it could be unwieldy, however. Another minor interesting note is that they have some predefined directories, like the home directory, and a function to return an app's data directory. [haskell]: http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/System-Directory.html [haskell's basic io]: http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/io-13.html QT: This is the only c++ cross platform library I'm vaguely familiar with. Instead of combining all the filesystem commands like Ruby, D, and Haskell, QT just puts the file operations in QFile and all the directory operations in QDir. Public methods operate on the current file or directory, whereas static methods operate on a string. Other than that, it's reasonably low level. Errors are done by returning a bool on if the operation was successful, and setting a global static member value "error" either QFile or QDir for more info. [qt's qfile]: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/qfile.html [qt's qdir]: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/qdir.html I think that pretty much covers everything. So, how shall we do ours? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Felix-language mailing list Felix-language@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/felix-language
