NAME
Path::Extended - yet another Path class
SYNOPSIS
use Path::Extended;
my $file = file('path/to/file.txt');
my $dir = dir('path/to/somewhere');
my $maybe_file = file_or_dir('path/to/file_or_dir');
my $maybe_dir = dir_or_file('path/to/file_or_dir');DESCRIPTION
This is yet another file/directory handler that does a bit more than Path::Class for some parts, and a bit less for other parts. One of the main difference is Path::Extended always tries to use forward slashes when possible, ie. even when you're on the MS Windows, so that you don't need to care about escaping paths that annoys you from time to time when you want to apply regexen to a path, especially in file tests that use 'like' or 'compare'.
Also, Path::Extended can do some basic file/directory operations such as copy, move, and rename as well as file I/O stuff like open, close, and slurp (and some of these may behave differently from the equivalents of Path::Class).
On the other hand, Path::Extended doesn't care (or care little) about converting foreign path names or ascending/descending path tree.
In short, this is not for manipulating a path name itself, but for doing some meaningful thing to or with something the path points to.
CAVEATS
Path::Extended always holds an absolute path of a file/directory internally, even when you pass a relative path (instead of volume/directory/basename combo as Path::Class does). And this is done by File::Spec, which tends to confuse when you set a wrong $^O just to use unix-style path name (as File::Spec fails to determine if the path is relative or not). So, don't pretend.
FUNCTIONS
All of these four functions are exported by default.
file
takes a file path and returns a Path::Extended::File object. The file doesn't need to exist.
dir
takes a directory path and returns a Path::Extended::Dir object. The directory doesn't need to exist.
file_or_dir
takes a file/directory path and returns a Path::Extended::File object if it doesn't point to an existing directory (if it does point to a directory, it returns a Path::Extended::Dir object). This is handy if you don't know a path is a file or a directory. You can tell which is the case by calling ->is_dir method (if it's a file, ->is_dir returns false, otherwise true).
dir_or_file
does the same above but Path::Extended::Dir has precedence.
KNOWN LIMITATIONS
Apparently this slash-converting approach of Path::Extended doesn't work under some environments like (older) MacPerl that allow slashes in a file name.
I'm not sure if I should also convert other separators like colons (:) to forward slashes under those environments, though I believe most of you (at least you of programmers) won't use slashes in file names no matter what OSes you use. This conversion may break things sometimes but one of the main aims of this module is not to break tests just because path separators differ, and tests usually don't require OS-specific paths, so I may convert them in the future releases. Patches and suggestions are welcome.
SEE ALSO
Path::Extended::File, Path::Extended::Dir,
AUTHOR
Kenichi Ishigaki, <ishigaki@cpan.org>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (C) 2008 by Kenichi Ishigaki.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.