Path::Class(3pm)

🌸 NAME 🌸

Okay bestie, welcome to the Path::Class(3pm) manual page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation crew. This is all about <pink>Path::Class</pink> — cross-platform path specification manipulation, fr fr. 💅

💖 VERSION 💖

version 0.37 — that's the one, no cap. ✨

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

use Path::Class;

my $dir  = dir('foo', 'bar');       # Path::Class::Dir object
my $file = file('bob', 'file.txt'); # Path::Class::File object

# Stringifies to 'foo/bar' on Unix, 'foo\bar' on Windows, etc.
print "dir: $dir\n";

# Stringifies to 'bob/file.txt' on Unix, 'bob\file.txt' on Windows
print "file: $file\n";

my $subdir  = $dir->subdir('baz');  # foo/bar/baz
my $parent  = $subdir->parent;      # foo/bar
my $parent2 = $parent->parent;      # foo

my $dir2 = $file->dir;              # bob

# Work with foreign paths
use Path::Class qw(foreign_file foreign_dir);
my $file = foreign_file('Mac', ':foo:file.txt');
print $file->dir;                   # :foo:
print $file->as_foreign('Win32');   # foo\file.txt

# Interact with the underlying filesystem:

# $dir_handle is an IO::Dir object
my $dir_handle = $dir->open or die "Can't read $dir: $!";

# $file_handle is an IO::File object
my $file_handle = $file->open($mode) or die "Can't read $file: $!";

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So <pink>Path::Class</pink> is a module for manipulation of file and directory specifications — like, strings describing their locations, such as '/home/ken/foo.txt' or 'C:\Windows\Foo.txt' — and it does it in a cross-platform manner. It supports pretty much every platform Perl runs on, including Unix, Windows, Mac, VMS, Epoc, Cygwin, OS/2, and NetWare. 🌍✨

The well-known File::Spec module also provides this service, but it's sort of awkward to use well, so people sometimes avoid it, or use it in a way that won't actually work properly on platforms significantly different than the ones they've tested their code on. 😬

In fact, <pink>Path::Class</pink> uses File::Spec internally, wrapping all the unsightly details so you can concentrate on your application code. Whereas File::Spec provides functions for some common path manipulations, <pink>Path::Class</pink> provides an object-oriented model of the world of path specifications and their underlying semantics. File::Spec doesn't create any objects, and its classes represent the different ways in which paths must be manipulated on various platforms — not a very intuitive concept, ngl. <pink>Path::Class</pink> creates objects representing files and directories, and provides methods that relate them to each other. 🎀

For instance, the following File::Spec code:

my $absolute = File::Spec->file_name_is_absolute(
                 File::Spec->catfile( @dirs, $file )
               );

can be written using <pink>Path::Class</pink> as

my $absolute = Path::Class::File->new( @dirs, $file )->is_absolute;

or even as

my $absolute = file( @dirs, $file )->is_absolute;

Similar readability improvements should happen all over the place when using <pink>Path::Class</pink>. 💖

Using <pink>Path::Class</pink> can help solve real problems in your code too — for instance, how many people actually take the "volume" (like "C:" on Windows) into account when writing File::Spec-using code? I thought not. But if you use <pink>Path::Class</pink>, your file and directory objects will know what volumes they refer to and do the right thing. 👑

The guts of the <pink>Path::Class</pink> code live in the Path::Class::File and Path::Class::Dir modules, so please see those modules' documentation for more details about how to use them. 🫶

🎀 EXPORT 🎀

These cuties are exported by default:

• file — A synonym for Path::Class::File->new.
• dir — A synonym for Path::Class::Dir->new.

If you would like to prevent their export, you may explicitly pass an empty list to perl's use, i.e. use Path::Class ().

The following are exported only on demand:

• foreign_file — A synonym for Path::Class::File->new_foreign.
• foreign_dir — A synonym for Path::Class::Dir->new_foreign.
• tempdir — Create a new Path::Class::Dir instance pointed to temporary directory.

my $temp = Path::Class::tempdir(CLEANUP => 1);

A synonym for Path::Class::Dir->new(File::Temp::tempdir(@_)).

🌈 Notes on Cross-Platform Compatibility 🌈

Although it is much easier to write cross-platform-friendly code with this module than with File::Spec, there are still some issues to be aware of. 🧚

• On some platforms, notably VMS and some older versions of DOS (I think), all filenames must have an extension. Thus if you create a file called foo/bar and then ask for a list of files in the directory foo, you may find a file called bar. instead of the bar you were expecting. Thus it might be a good idea to use an extension in the first place. 💀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Ken Williams, KWILLIAMS@cpan.org — iconic. 💜

💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright (c) Ken Williams. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. 🌸

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

Go check out Path::Class::Dir, Path::Class::File, and File::Spec. 🦋

That's the whole manual, bestie! 💖 Source/version: perl v5.42.0 · date: 2016-08-15 · manual page: Path::Class(3pm) ✨