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Feature #11302

closed

Dir.entries and Dir.foreach without [".", ".."]

Added by naruse (Yui NARUSE) almost 9 years ago. Updated over 6 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Target version:
-
[ruby-dev:49135]

Description

Dir.entries returns an array of its content with "." and "..".
But as far as I met, almost all cases don't need them.

How about adding such new method or options?


Related issues 2 (0 open2 closed)

Related to Ruby master - Feature #13789: Dir - methodsRejectedActions
Related to Ruby master - Feature #13969: Dir#each_childClosedActions

Updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) almost 9 years ago

Candidates for the methods or options?

I prefer a same option for both methods, but no concrete idea.

Updated by red (Arnaud Rouyer) almost 9 years ago

Nobuyoshi Nakada wrote:

Candidates for the methods or options?

I prefer a same option for both methods, but no concrete idea.

Dir.foreach and Dir.entries both support a second hash argument for options: as of 2.2.2, the docs only mention the :encoding key in the options hash.

Basing myself on the GNU ls util, I propose supporting an :ignore key in the optional hash argument.

We could have an API similar to this:

$ ls -a
.
..
.hidden_file
directory
file.bin

$ irb

irb:001> Dir.entries('.')
 => [".", "..", ".hidden_file", "directory", "file.bin"]
irb:002> Dir.entries('.', ignore: :almost_all)  # almost_all option name taken from GNU ls option name
 => [".hidden_file", "directory", "file.bin"]   # http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/ls.c#n4784
irb:003> Dir.entries('.', ignore: :directories)
=> [".hidden_file", "file.bin"]
irb:004> Dir.entries('.', ignore: :hidden)
=> ["directory", "file.bin"]

# Fancy proposal
irb:005> Dir.entries('.', ignore: /o/)
=> [".", "..", ".hidden_file", "file.bin"]

Edit after a closer look:

Internally, Dir.entries and Dir.foreach both call Dir.new and use the resulting Dir object's #to_a and #each methods respectively to return an array/an enumerator. If we want to go down this path, these options have to be supported in Dir.new, stored in the Dir instance and reused in the #each enumerator to filter out ignored entries.

Updated by olivierlacan (Olivier Lacan) about 7 years ago

red (Arnaud Rouyer) wrote:

Basing myself on the GNU ls util, I propose supporting an :ignore key in the optional hash argument.

I very much like this. I just ran into this issue myself today having to remove . and .. from Dir.entries output.

I don't think the ignore option accepting a regex is fancy at all, it makes a ton of sense. An array should also be acceptable considering that Dir.entries('.', ignore: %w[. ..]) would become equivalent to:

Dir.entries('.') - %w[. ..]

I find it quite elegant, and certainly a lot more discoverable than GNU ls style arguments. :-)

Updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) almost 7 years ago

red (Arnaud Rouyer) wrote:

Basing myself on the GNU ls util, I propose supporting an :ignore key in the optional hash argument.

irb:002> Dir.entries('.', ignore: :almost_all)  # almost_all option name taken from GNU ls option name

ignore: :almost_all seems like that almost all files will be ignored and only '.' and '..' will be returned.

Updated by akr (Akira Tanaka) almost 7 years ago

There is Pathname#children and Pathname#each_child.

How about Dir.children and Dir.each_child ?

Updated by shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe) almost 7 years ago

+1 for Dir.children

Updated by matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) almost 7 years ago

Sounds good.

Matz.

Actions #8

Updated by nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) almost 7 years ago

  • Status changed from Assigned to Closed

Applied in changeset trunk|r58879.


dir.c: Dir.each_child and Dir.children

  • dir.c (dir_s_each_child, dir_s_children): Dir.each_child and
    Dir.children which are similar to Dir.foreach and Dir.entries
    respectively, except to exclude "." and "..". [Feature #11302]
Actions #9

Updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze) over 6 years ago

Updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze) over 6 years ago

The decision here is surprising given https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/13789#note-3
but nevertheless I'm very happy this got accepted.

Actions #11

Updated by znz (Kazuhiro NISHIYAMA) over 6 years ago

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