request: File cp/mv/rm

[elia]

Those are on FileUtils in Ruby

I don't have any particular opinion about where they should go (File, Dir, FileSystem, FileUtils, …)

[asterite]

If somebody wants to tackle this, we'll be more than happy to merge pull requests for this. Ideally File/FileUtils should be in Crystal.

[daviswahl]

Accidentally deleted my comment -- I would be happy to take this on, but on second thought this is low level C stuff which I really shouldn't be getting involved in.

[refi64]

I would love trying this! I have pretty much memorized half the Posix filesystem functions from using them in C++. :O

[elia]

I would be happy to take this on, but on second thought this is low level C stuff which I really shouldn't be getting involved in.

Same here

@kirbyfan64 <3

[refi64]

Are rm and mv really needed? Can't one already use File.delete and File.rename?

[ysbaddaden]

They're nice in FileUtils since Rake includes it, so we can go shell-like in tasks. I'm not sure they're so interesting in Crystal.

[EvanHahn]

I agree with @kirbyfan64 here:

Can't one already use File.delete and File.rename?

[ysbaddaden]

That depends: if we want FileUtils.rm_r and FileUtils.rm_rf then not having FileUtils.rm might be weird. Same for mv since File.rename could feel odd:

include FileUtils

cp src, dst
File.rename dst, dst2
rm_rf dst2

That being said, these methods would be aliases, and maybe we don't want shell-induced naming, so we could prefer better method names in File and Dir, like Dir.delete(path, recursively: true) or Dir.copy(src, dst) and have a shard provide FileUtils instead.

[asterite]

Yes, I'm still unsure about what's the best thing to do here: have separate methods in File, Dir, etc. Or have them all in FileUtils with unix-like names. Or have both.

Having both is really not a bad option, because if your code needs to do "bashy" stuff then it will look similar to bash, and if you need to rename a file here and there you can just use File.rename instead of FileUtils.mv. These are like aliases but probably don't bother much. Aliases are mostly a problem when all of them need to be in related types (like the case of length/size/count in String, Array, Hash, Deque and possibly other containers), because if I want to add a new container I have to remember to implement all these aliases.

[ysbaddaden]

Sounds good to me.

[sevk]

can we auto convert from this file : https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/lib/fileutils.rb

[sdogruyol]

@spalladino since #3420 is merged can we close this?

[spalladino]

Certainly! Thanks for spotting this @sdogruyol :-)

[sdogruyol]

@spalladino gracias 👍