I was going to stay out of this one...
On 14Jul2014 10:25, Victor Stinner <victor.stin...@gmail.com> wrote:
2014-07-14 4:17 GMT+02:00 Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com>:
Or the ever popular symlink to "." (or a directory higher in the tree).
"." and ".." are explicitly ignored by os.listdir() an os.scandir().
I think os.walk() is a good source of inspiration here: call the flag
"followlink" and default it to False.
I also think followslinks should be spelt like os.walk, and also default to
False.
IMO the specific function os.walk() is not a good example. It includes
symlinks to directories in the dirs list and then it does not follow
symlink,
I agree that is a bad mix.
it is a recursive function and has a followlinks optional
parameter (default: False).
Which I think is desirable.
Moreover, in 92% of cases, functions using os.listdir() and
os.path.isdir() *follow* symlinks:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2014-July/135435.html
Sigh.
This is a historic artifact, a convenience, and a side effect of bring symlinks
into UNIX in the first place.
The objective was that symlinks should largely be transparent to users for
naive operation. So the UNIX calls open/cd/listdir all follow symlinks so that
things work transparently and a million C programs do not break.
However, so do chmod/chgrp/chown, for the same reasons and with generally less
desirable effects.
Conversely, the find command, for example, does not follow symlinks and this is
generally a good thing. "ls" is the same. Like os.walk, they are for inspecting
stuff, and shouldn't indirect unless asked.
I think following symlinks, especially for something like os.walk and
os.scandir, should default to False. I DO NOT want to quietly wander to remote
parts of the file space because someone has stuck a symlink somewhere
unfortunate, lurking like a little bomb (or perhaps trapdoor, waiting to suck
me down into an unexpected dark place).
It is also slower to follow symlinks by default.
I am also against flag parameters that default to True, on the whole; they are
a failure of ergonomic design. Leaving off a flag should usually be like
setting it to False. A missing flag is an "off" flag.
For these reasons (and others I have not yet thought through:-) I am voting for
a:
followlinks=False
optional parameter.
If you want to follow links, it is hardly difficult.
Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>
Our job is to make the questions so painful that the only way to make the
pain go away is by thinking. - Fred Friendly
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