Pow → ‘Path Manipulation’

Get Version

0.1.1

What

Pow encapsulate the functionality of several ruby libraries (FileUtils, Files, Pathname and Dir) by creating objects out path strings.

Installing

sudo gem install pow

The basics

# The Simplest Example

require 'rubygems'
require 'pow'

path = Pow["."] # Let's create a pow object in the current directory.

Wow, amazing right? I guess not. But we’ll get to the good stuff. Let’s look at how pow deals with directories. Assume we are dealing with a directory structure like this

Demonstration of usage

Consider this directory structure

# Open up the /tmp dir
path = Pow["/tmp"]

# Check out what's inside
path.each {|child| puts "#{child} - #{child.class.name}" }

Output

/tmp/README - Pow::File
/tmp/subdir - Pow::Directory
/tmp/suber_dir - Pow::Directory
/tmp/subdir/file.txt - Pow::File
/tmp/subdir/program - Pow::File
/tmp/extra_dir - Pow::Directory

Cool, but what if I just want the directories or just the files

path.files.each {|file| "This is a file #{file}"}
path.directories.each {|directory| "Here is a directory #{directory}"}

When pow encounters a directory it creates a Pow::Directory object. This is enumerable so you can use all your favorite iterative methods on directory structures now.

path.find_all {|p| p.directory? and p.modified_at > 1.day.ago}
path.reject {|p| p.permissions == 744}
path.collect {|p| p.size}

You can also create directories and files

path["new_dir"].create # New dir
path["tmp/tmp.file"].create # New file (if it has a '.' Pow considers it a file by default)"
path["tmp/also_a_file"].create_file # If you want to force file creation just use create_file (create_directory for the reverse)

You can read and write to files as well

# Shove some stuff into tmp.file
path["tmp/tmp.file"].open("w") do |file|
  file.puts "Hey Baby!"
end

# Get the stuff out of tmp.file"
path["tmp/tmp.file"].open do |file|
  puts file.read
end

# Alternatively
path["tmp/tmp.file"].read

You can delete files and directories

begin
  path.delete
rescue PowError => e
  puts "Oh no! It threw an error because the tmp dir is not empty... we will have to force it."
end

path["tmp"].delete!

path.exists? # => false

With Pow you can also create directory structures such as

Pow["./moar"].create do
  Pow["empty_dir"].create
  
  Pow["sub_dir"].create do
    Pow["info.txt"].create {|file| file.puts "Here is the info you desired!"}
  end
  
  Pow["README"].create_file {|file| file.puts "I'm so glad you read this."}
end

puts "So what are the dirs in tmp"
puts Pow["./moar"].directories.join(", ")

puts
puts "What are the files in tmp"
puts Pow["./moar"].files.join(", ")

puts
puts "Is the empty dir empty? #{Pow['./moar/empty_dir'].empty?}"

Pow["./moar"].delete! # Clean up your mess

Output 
So what are the dirs in tmp
/Users/corey/Code/pow/moar/empty_dir, /Users/corey/Code/pow/moar/sub_dir

What are the files in tmp
/Users/corey/Code/pow/moar/README

Is the empty dir empty? true

Is the there a super cool, but ultimately pointless way to create a Pow object?”

path = Pow["."]/:tmp/:sub_dir/:another_dir/:deeper_still/"a.file"
path.create

Forum

rubyforge forum

How to submit patches

Read the 8 steps for fixing other people’s code and for section 8b: Submit patch to Google Groups, use the Google Group above.

The trunk repository is svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/pow/trunk for anonymous access.

License

This code is free to use under the terms of the MIT license.

Contact

All contact can be done through the rubyforge page http://rubyforge.org/projects/pow/

Corey Johnson, 9th October 2007
Theme extended from Paul Battley