Re: [ANN] file_slurp - read/write entire files from/to a string (module design discussion)

[HyperHacker <hyperhacker@...>]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 20:29, David Manura <dm.lua@math2.org> wrote:
> file_slurp [1] provides simple functions to read/write entire files
> from/to a string.
>
> SYNOPSIS
>
>  -- Example to convert tabs to spaces in a file.
>  local FS = require 'file_slurp'
>  local s = FS.readfile 'foo.txt'
>  s = s:gsub('\t', '    ')
>  FS.writefile('foo.txt', s)
>  -- Also supports ascii/binary, error policies, and pipes:
>  s = FS.readfile('ls -la', 'p')
>
> This is a common pattern.  I tried to strike a balance without
> over-engineering it so that this module might be commonly used.  There
> are similar functions in Penlight (`pl.util`), and this alternate
> implementation has been submitted to Penlight for consideration, but
> regardless that decision, I still plan to maintain it as a standalone
> module.
>
> Any comments on the module implementation or style are welcome.  Use
> of this simple module is also an experiment in finding best practices
> for module authoring in Lua.  For example, _VERSION = 0.001001 is a
> number (not string) of the form x.yyyzzz, which is a style that may be
> debatable but allows trivial numeric comparison [2].  The "slurp"
> naming was inspired from Perl (e.g. [2]).  The module name was chosen
> as `file_slurp` rather than `file.slurp` since the latter gives the
> false impression that `file` is a table, and `fileslurp` might
> initially misread as `files lurp`.  On the other hand, function names
> are `readfile` and `writefile` even though I prefer inserting
> underscores between words for clarity.  Clarity isn't an issue in this
> case, which follows Lua conventions similar to `loadstring`.  The
> inclusion of `io.popen` support is also debatable, but it shares most
> of the implementation and won't normally pose as a security risk since
> the `options` flag would not normally be tainted from user input.
> Care is also taken to check the return value of `fh:close()`, which
> not everyone bothers with, but that is particularly important with 5.2
> pipes.  The file was packed for posting on gist and for readability
> (e.g. POD-like documentation in a comment at top before code) but can
> be easily unpacked as well.
>
> [1] https://gist.github.com/1325400/
> [2] lua-users.org/wiki/ModuleVersioning
> [3] http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?File::Slurp
>
>

Getting into 6 decimal places, I start to get nervous about loss of precision...

-- 
Sent from my toaster.