FileStr

• Introduction

• Usage

• Methods

Introduction

FileStr is a library that augments String objects with File, Dir, and FileUtils capabilities (class methods). The String (self) is passed as the first argument to original class methods. With FileStr you can use “normal” strings as filename/dirname objects.

It is sometimes inconvenient to write

File.exist?( 'report.txt' )

when you could instead do

'report.txt'.f_exist?

The class methods from File are prefixed with “f_”, Dir methods with “d_”, and FileUtils methods with “u_”. There are some special versions of methods which are prefixed with “s_” (See: Methods).

FileStr class inherits String class, i.e. it has all String methods. It also includes all the augmenting methods. You can keep the augmenting methods within FileStr class, or you can explicitly make them also part of String class.

Usage

After requiring the “filestr” library, you have FileStr class defined which includes methods from File, Dir, and FileUtils.

You can create a FileStr object from String:

require 'filestr'
fs = 'report.txt'.to_fs

or

fs = 'report.txt'.fs

Then you can check if the file exists?

fs.f_exist?

If you execute:

String.fileStr

you get all augmenting methods straight to String class and you can use strings directly. For example:

'report.txt'.f_exist?

or

'bin'.d_exist?

to test if there is a sub-directory called “bin”.

You can rename (move) a file with:

'report.txt'.u_mv( 'history.txt' )

Methods

Almost all class methods from File and Dir are imported. A filtered selection is taken from FileUtils.

Some methods from File and Dir doesn’t take a name (filename, dirname) as the first argument. There are modified versions of these methods within FileStr where the “name” argument comes from self. These method are prefixed with “s_”.

List of special methods:

s_chmod, s_chown, s_fnmatch

You can change a mode of a file:

'report.txt'.s_chmod( 0777 )

There is also a special version of Dir.glob, called s_glob. s_glob concatenates the string (self) to the given “pattern” argument, and passed this to Dir.glob.

The complete list of methods coming directly from File, Dir, and FileUtils is:

f_binread, f_binwrite, f_copy_stream, f_foreach, f_read,
f_readlines, f_sysopen, f_write, f_absolute_path, f_atime,
f_basename, f_birthtime, f_blockdev?, f_chardev?, f_ctime,
f_delete, f_directory?, f_dirname, f_executable?,
f_executable_real?, f_exist?, f_exists?, f_expand_path,
f_extname, f_filename, f_file?, f_ftype, f_grpowned?,
f_identical?, f_join, f_link, f_lstat, f_mtime, f_new, f_open,
f_owned?, f_path, f_pipe?, f_readable?, f_readable_real?,
f_readlink, f_realdirpath, f_realpath, f_rename, f_setgid?,
f_setuid?, f_size, f_size?, f_socket?, f_split, f_stat,
f_sticky?, f_symlink, f_symlink?, f_truncate, f_unlink,
f_world_readable?, f_world_writable?, f_writable?,
f_writable_real?, f_zero?, d_chdir, d_chroot, d_delete,
d_entries, d_exist?, d_exists?, d_foreach, d_mkdir, d_new,
d_open, d_rmdir, d_unlink, u_cd, u_cmp, u_mkdir_p, u_ln_s,
u_cp, u_cp_r, u_mv, u_rm, u_rm_f, u_rm_r, u_rm_rf, u_touch,
u_uptodate?

You can use the original documentation of the class methods above. Just imagine the string (self) as being the first argument, and the rest are as in documentation.