More useful file commands

[schwern]

touch

recursive rm

mv and cp allowing multiple source files to a directory

mkdir -p

Crib from ExtUtils::Command and Shell::Command.

[cowens]

Is this too UNIX centric?

Recursive rm and mkdir -p already exist in File::Path as remove_tree and mkpath respectively. Multiple file mv and copy should be easy: move and copy from File::Copy combined with a for loop.

sub mv {
    my $dir = pop;
    croak "not enough args" unless @_;
    for my $file (@_) {
        move $file, $dir
            or croak "could not move '$file' to '$dir': $!;
    }
    return 1;
}

touch is implemented by Touch

[schwern]

The names are Unixy, but the need for the functionality is not. make_path() and remove_tree() are better. Not sure what to do about mv and cp and touch.

[cowens]

hmm, move_file/copy_file isn't good enough because you can move/copy a directory. And I don't like move or copy because they are general verbs. Naming them Fred and Barney isn't any good either. Must think some more.

[schwern]

Rather than making these functions, make them methods on file/dir objects. In particular, Path::Extended does a lot of this.

[kentfredric]

The following syntax looks reasonable to me:

dir("/some/dir/")->copy_to("/some/other/dir")  # produces /some/other/dir 
dir("/some/dir/")->copy_to("/some/other/dir")  # error, exists
dir("/some/dir/")->copy_to("/some/other/dir", { replace  => 1 })  # same as if you'd rm'd the target first
dir("/some/dir/")->copy_to("/some/other/dir", { merge  => 1 })  # tries to  recursively inject things.

dir("/some/dir/")->copy_into("/some/other/dir") # produces /some/other/dir/dir 
dir("/some/dir/")->copy_to("/some/other/file")   # error
dir("/some/dir/")->copy_into("/some/other/file")  # error

I'm probably trying too hard to be smart with that auto-remove/auto-merge thing.

[kentfredric]

doing that syntax with a list of things is probably the harder option, but I don't see why its neeed:

for ( @dirs ){ 
   dir($_)->copy_to( $target );
}

[dhorne]

How about Path::Tiny?

[schwern]

Path::Tiny covers touch, recursive rm (remove_tree()) and mkdir -p (mkpath).

Since this issue speculative, and much of that speculation and much much more is done by incorporating Path::Tiny, I'm going to close it. Concrete requests can be opened as separate issues.