NAME

Path::Class - Cross-platform path specification manipulation

SYNOPSIS

  use Path::Class;
  
  my $dir  = dir('foo', 'bar');       # Path::Class::Dir object
  my $file = file('bob', 'file.txt'); # Path::Class::File object
  
  # Stringifies to 'foo/bar' on Unix, 'foo\bar' on Windows, etc.
  print "dir: $dir\n";
  
  # Stringifies to 'bob/file.txt' on Unix, 'bob\file.txt' on Windows
  print "file: $file\n";
  
  my $subdir  = $dir->subdir('baz');  # foo/bar/baz
  my $parent  = $subdir->parent;      # foo/bar
  my $parent2 = $parent->parent;      # foo
  
  my $dir2 = $file->dir;              # bob

  # Work with foreign paths
  use Path::Class qw(foreign_file foreign_dir);
  my $file = foreign_file('Mac', ':foo:file.txt');
  print $file->dir;                   # :foo:
  print $file->as_foreign('Win32');   # foo\file.txt
  
  # Interact with the underlying filesystem:
  
  # $dir_handle is an IO::Dir object
  my $dir_handle = $dir->open or die "Can't read $dir: $!";
  
  # $file_handle is an IO::File object
  my $file_handle = $file->open($mode) or die "Can't read $file: $!";

DESCRIPTION

Path::Class is a module for manipulation of file and directory specifications (strings describing their locations, like '/home/ken/foo.txt' or 'C:\Windows\Foo.txt') in a cross-platform manner. It supports pretty much every platform Perl runs on, including Unix, Windows, Mac, VMS, Epoc, Cygwin, OS/2, and NetWare.

The well-known module File::Spec also provides this service, but it's sort of awkward to use well, so people sometimes avoid it, or use it in a way that won't actually work properly on platforms significantly different than the ones they've tested their code on.

In fact, Path::Class uses File::Spec internally, wrapping all the unsightly details so you can concentrate on your application code. Whereas File::Spec provides functions for some common path manipulations, Path::Class provides an object-oriented model of the world of path specifications and their underlying semantics. File::Spec doesn't create any objects, and its classes represent the different ways in which paths must be manipulated on various platforms (not a very intuitive concept). Path::Class creates objects representing files and directories, and provides methods that relate them to each other. For instance, the following File::Spec code:

 my $absolute = File::Spec->file_name_is_absolute(
                  File::Spec->catfile( @dirs, $file )
                );

can be written using Path::Class as

 my $absolute = Path::Class::File->new( @dirs, $file )->is_absolute;

or even as

 my $absolute = file( @dirs, $file )->is_absolute;

Similar readability improvements should happen all over the place when using Path::Class.

Using Path::Class can help solve real problems in your code too - for instance, how many people actually take the "volume" (like C: on Windows) into account when writing File::Spec-using code? I thought not. But if you use Path::Class, your file and directory objects will know what volumes they refer to and do the right thing.

The guts of the Path::Class code live in the Path::Class::File and Path::Class::Dir modules, so please see those modules' documentation for more details about how to use them.

EXPORT

The following functions are exported by default.

file: A synonym for Path::Class::File->new.
dir: A synonym for Path::Class::Dir->new.

If you would like to prevent their export, you may explicitly pass an empty list to perl's use, i.e. use Path::Class ().

The following are exported only on demand.

foreign_file: A synonym for Path::Class::File->new_foreign.
foreign_dir: A synonym for Path::Class::Dir->new_foreign.

Notes on Cross-Platform Compatibility

Although it is much easier to write cross-platform-friendly code with this module than with File::Spec, there are still some issues to be aware of.

Some platforms, notably VMS and some older versions of DOS (I think), all filenames must have an extension. Thus if you create a file called foo/bar and then ask for a list of files in the directory foo, you may find a file called bar. instead of the bar you were expecting. Thus it might be a good idea to use an extension in the first place.

AUTHOR

Ken Williams, KWILLIAMS@cpan.org

COPYRIGHT

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.