Re: Problems with lposix on win32

[Chris Marrin <chris@...>]

Edgar Toernig wrote:
> D Burgess wrote:
>
> > I understand, someone correct me if I am wrong that on
> > Unix unlink will remove the file when the last user of it
> > closes the file.
>
>
> The name is removed immediately but the contents of the
> file may stay and is removed only when the last user closes
> the file.
>
> The difference between unlink and remove is, that unlink won't
> delete directories.  remove does as long as the directory is
> empty.  On older system which lack remove you had to call rmdir
> the delete directories.

Yes, I see that the posix spec says this explicitly. Furthermore it says 
that you cannot remove non-empty directories. So maybe we should get rid 
of rmdir() from osex, since remove() in os can do this functionality. 
And you can discover if a file is a regular file or directory using 
osex.stat().

I'd also like to argue that we toss osex.getenv() since this function is 
in os as well. I originally thought we should keep it for completeness. 
But now I think we should minimize the footprint of osex. I would also 
like to replace putenv() with a setenv(name[,value]) function. This 
avoids the need to construct the putenv string. And it allows the name 
to be removed from the environment by omitting value. The original 
lposix package had this, but it had a third 'overwrite' param. I don't 
think this is needed, since you can see if a variable exists with 
os.getenv() and then avoid calling osex.setenv() if so.

I have also added a files() function, so here is the current proposed list:

access(path,[mode])	test file accessibility
chdir(path)		make the given path the cwd
chmod(path,mode)	change permissions on the path to the mode str
errno()			return the last error string,number
files([path])		return an iterator for the passed path
getcwd()		return the cwd
mkdir(path)		create a directory at the passed path
setenv(name[,value])	set a value in the environment
sleep(sec)		sleep for the passed number of seconds
stat(path,[selector])	return status for the file at the passed path
umask([mode])		set the mask for future file creations

I think that's a pretty complete set for starters. I have implemented 
this set for Win32 using MSDev 7.1. I will send the code as soon as I 
have tested it.

--
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