struct Path

• Path
• Struct
• Value
• Object

Overview

A Path represents a filesystem path and allows path-handling operations such as querying its components as well as semantic manipulations.

A path is hierarchical and composed of a sequence of directory and file name elements separated by a special separator or delimiter. A root component, that identifies a file system hierarchy, may also be present. The name element that is farthest from the root of the directory hierarchy is the name of a file or directory. The other name elements are directory names. A Path can represent a root, a root and a sequence of names, or simply one or more name elements. A Path is considered to be an empty path if it consists solely of one name element that is empty or equal to ".". Accessing a file using an empty path is equivalent to accessing the default directory of the process.

Examples

Path["foo/bar/baz.cr"].parent    # => Path["foo/bar"]
Path["foo/bar/baz.cr"].basename  # => "baz.cr"
Path["./foo/../bar"].normalize   # => Path["bar"]
Path["~/bin"].expand(home: true) # => Path["/home/crystal/bin"]

For now, its methods are purely lexical, there is no direct filesystem access.

Path handling comes in different kinds depending on operating system:

• Path.posix() creates a new POSIX path
• Path.windows() creates a new Windows path
• Path.new() means Path.posix on POSIX platforms and Path.windows() on Windows platforms.

# On POSIX system:
Path.new("foo", "bar", "baz.cr") == Path.posix("foo/bar/baz.cr")
# On Windows system:
Path.new("foo", "bar", "baz.cr") == Path.windows("foo\\bar\\baz.cr")

The main differences between Windows and POSIX paths:

• POSIX paths use forward slash (/) as only path separator, Windows paths use backslash (\) as default separator but also recognize forward slashes.
• POSIX paths are generally case-sensitive, Windows paths case-insensitive (see #<=>).
• A POSIX path is absolute if it begins with a forward slash (/). A Windows path is absolute if it starts with a drive letter and root (C:\).

Path.posix("/foo/./bar").normalize   # => Path.posix("/foo/bar")
Path.windows("/foo/./bar").normalize # => Path.windows("\\foo\\bar")

Path.posix("/foo").absolute?   # => true
Path.windows("/foo").absolute? # => false

Path.posix("foo") == Path.posix("FOO")     # => false
Path.windows("foo") == Path.windows("FOO") # => true

Included Modules

• Comparable(Path)

Defined in:

cli_helper.cr

Constructors

• .new(value : Admiral::StringValue)

Constructor Detail