Mailing List Archive: zipfile.py, file system abstractions

At one point we discussed file system abstractions on this list. Do
we want to pursue the idea? I have an implementation that's been
tested on Unix: a Filesystem instance refers to either the entire
"native" filesystem, or a subset of a filesystem (either a filesystem
object or the native filesystem), based on a "root" that's a directory
within the parent filesystem.
There'd need to be some work done to make sure it works properly on
Windows and the Mac, but I don't think that would be a lot of work.
I think this should be available as an abstraction in Python.
Implementing this on top of a ZIP/JAR file is also useful. If Jim
A.'s zipfile.py will be added to the standard library in 1.6, I'd like
to add a Filesystem class that operates on a zipfile object.
Any thoughts?
If you want this, someone needs to check in and document
zipfile.py. ;) I'll add filesys.py & it's documentation.

-Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives

[Fred, proposing filesystem.py]

I think we should discuss the desired interface here a bit more before
talking about specific implementations. This class wants to look like
the os module, except that instead of an open method (which returns an
integer filedescriptor) it has a fopen method, similar to the built-in
open function (which returns a file-like object).

The implementation you post would confuse people because it has some
specific hooks to deal with subsetting an existing filesystem (sort-of
like chroot, but enforced by path algebra). This would be usable in
an rexec environment, but not when dealing with a zipfile or a remote
filesystem.

If we define an API that's a subset of the os module (including
os.path), maybe we can make the os module conform to the same API; I
think all that's needed is to make a list of methods that are part of
the interface, and add os.fopen as an alias for __builtin__.open.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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