On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Olli Pettay <olli.pet...@helsinki.fi> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> the current "File API: Directories and System" seems to use
> callbacks and not events, yet other
> File APIs (the ones for read and write) use events.
> That is quite major inconsistency in the APIs.
> IIRC there was already some discussion about which approach to use
> when the API for read was designed and it was decided that events should be
> used.
>
> Using events would make it rather easy to track moves, copies etc, of a
> file. Just set the event listeners when the entry is first time
> accessed, and then you get notified whenever the file is moved etc.
FileReader and FileWriter are fundamentally different than FileSystem.
Reading or writing a file is an ongoing process, hence progress
events make a lot of sense. Getting a file handle, deleting a file,
creating a directory, etc., are all very binary. They've happened or
they haven't, and there's no progress to report. Thus callbacks make
sense for those operations.
It sounds like you're looking for some sort of a FileSystemWatcher
object that would let you keep track of everything that's happening in
a filesystem. That's not a request I've heard before; if you've got
specific use cases in mind, please post them.
Eric
