`toString` should be actual local path and not URI

[holgerbrandl]

`toString` should be actual local path and not URI

[pathikrit]

I thought about this. I wanted to leave the door open for future filesystems e.g. s3:///foo/bar. More realistically, it could be a file inside a zipped file e.g. zip://foo.zip/!filename etc. Those who expected the /home/user/test.txt should call .pathAsString to be more explicit anyway since .toString of a file is not obvious what it should be by itself?

[pathikrit]

Check this out:

scala> case class Person(name: String)
defined class Person

scala> Person("Bob")
res0: Person = Person(Bob)

scala> res0.toString
res1: String = Person(Bob)

By, the above logic, the idiomatic .toString for files should be s"File($path)" e.g. File(/tmp/foo/bar). If that is true, then the uri version seems better to me.

[holgerbrandl]

Indeed case classes use different default toString, however to make b-f a convenient replacement for built-in java.io.File/java.nio.file.Path, b-f should mimic those where possible. So consider

scala> // Using "old" java.io.File API

scala> import java.io.File
import java.io.File

scala> val someFile = new File("foo")
someFile: java.io.File = foo


scala> val derivedFile = new File(someFile, "bar")
derivedFile: java.io.File = foo/bar

scala> // Using java.nio.file.Path API

scala> import java.nio.file._
import java.nio.file._

scala> val path = Paths.get("somthing")
path: java.nio.file.Path = somthing


scala> val childEl = path.resolve("else.txt")
childEl: java.nio.file.Path = somthing/else.txt

scala> // Using BF API

scala> val betterFile = better.files.File("foo")
betterFile: better.files.File = file:///Users/brandl/Dropbox/cluster_sync/scalautils/foo

scala> val betterDerivedFile = betterFile/"bar"
betterDerivedFile: better.files.File = file:///Users/brandl/Dropbox/cluster_sync/scalautils/foo/bar

Or just the code

// Using old java file API
import java.io.File

val someFile = new File("foo")
val derivedFile = new File(someFile, "bar")


// Using Path API
import java.nio.file._

val path = Paths.get("somthing")
val childPath = path.resolve("else.txt")


// Using BF API
val betterFile = better.files.File("foo")
val betterDerivedFile = betterFile/"bar"

b-f is neither using the same toString (which would be just the (optionally relative) path and not the uri) nor is it keeping path-relativity. Both are important features I think, which java-designers obvioulsy carefully preserved when rewriting File into Path API.

[pathikrit]

Although IMO, .toString is meaningless since its just an arbitrary representation of an object and you should not trust or depend on it for anything except debugging purposes, but I will reopen this issue for the sake of meeting the expectations of users expecting the Java files behaviour

[holgerbrandl]

Codewise it should be easy to implement. It seems that reducing

  val path = _path.normalize.toAbsolutePath

to

  val path = _path

does the trick without breaking code or tests. The only other change would be to tweak the File.toString to use path.toString instead, which would require a single unit test (better/files/FileSpec.scala:71) to be adjusted.

File.pathAsString could be removed since it would equal toString

A useful/necessary addition to better.files.File would be

def absoluteFile = path.normalize.toAbsolutePath

to provide a means to derelativize a b.f.File instance (which is at the moment applied in the constructor but not always wanted/needed)

I've played around with such a modified version and it feels very good and consistent and indeed like a better java.jo.File/Path API.

I'd be happy to create a pull request but it's just changing a few words so it's barely worth the effort. :-)