Am 13.05.2013 02:21, schrieb Ben Hoyt: > Are you suggesting just accessing .cached_lstat could call os.lstat()? > That seems very bad to me. It's a property access -- it looks cheap, > therefore people will expect it to be. From PEP 8 "Avoid using > properties for computationally expensive operations; the attribute > notation makes the caller believe that access is (relatively) cheap." > > Even worse is error handling -- I'd expect the expression > "entry.cached_lstat" to only ever raise AttributeError, not OSError in > the case it calls stat under the covers. Calling code would have to > have a try/except around what looked like a simple attribute access. > > For these two reasons I think lstat() should definitely be a function.
OK, you got me! I'm now convinced that a property is a bad idea. I still like to annotate that the function may return a cached value. Perhaps lstat() could require an argument? def lstat(self, cached): if not cached or self._lstat is None: self._lstat = os.lstat(...) return self._lstat > True. My isdir/isfile/islink implementations should catch any OSError > from the lstat() and return False (like os.path.isdir etc do). But > then calling code still doesn't need try/excepts around the isdir() > calls. This is how os.walk() is implemented -- there's no extra error > handling around the isdir() call. You could take the opportunity and take the 'file was deleted' case into account. I admit it has a very low priority. Please regard the case for bonus points only. ;) > Sure. I'm primarily a Windows dev, so not too familiar with all the > fancy stat* functions. But what you're saying makes sense. I'm glad to be of assistance! The feature is new (added in 3.3) and is available on most POSIX platforms. http://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#dir-fd If you need any help or testing please feel free to ask me. I really like to get this feature into 3.4. Christian _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com