FileAndDirs is a member of the APLTree library. The library is a collection of classes etc. that aim to support the Dyalog APL programmer. Search GitHub for "apltree" and you will find solutions to many every-day problems Dyalog APL programmers might have to solve.
Note: FilesAndDirs releases are published as Tatin packages, see there.
With version 15.0 Dyalog has introduced several new system functions that make it much easier to write platform independent code when it comes to dealing with files and directories.
However, there are some gaps left: copying and moving files for example, or a recursive directory listing.
FilesAndDirs aims to close these gaps: it offers the same functionality for Windows, Linux and Mac OS.
Under Windows the backslash \ character is used as delimiter. Under Linux and Mac OS it is the / character. However, Windows is willing to accept the / rather than the \ in most cases. The easiest way therefore seems to be to use / everywhere.
Almost. As it turns out there are several occasions when one still has to settle for the \:
- Calls to third party software.
- Calls to .NET assemblies.
- Setting properties like
Directoryin theFileBoxGUI objects. - ... (there are most likely more!)
For that reason since version 1.3 all methods of FilesAndDirs accept both the / and the \ characters as directory seperators but when returning a result that is a path name then it will always make sure that the correct separator for the given operating system is used.
That's the reason why the class offers method like Exists, CreateFile, DeleteFile and even NNAMES and NCREATE: they don't do much more than their system function equivalents except that they normalize any filenames and directory names.
Of course this means that FilesAndDirs cannot deal under Linux and Mac OS with names that contain a \, but if you try to write platform independent code then you must not do this anyway, and most likely you shouldn't even if you don't.
FilesAndDirs is a Tatin package. You may load it (for investigation) or install it (for permanent usage:
]Tatin.LoadPackage [Tatin]FilesAndDirs #
]Tatin.InstallPackage [Tatin]FilesAndDirs /path/to/installFolder
Cd
CheckPath
CurrentSep
DeleteFile
Dir
EnforceBackslash
EnforceSlash
Exists
ExpandPath
GetNewLineCharsFor
GetTempFilename
GetTempFilename2
GetTempPath
GetTempSubDir
History
IsDir
IsFile
IsSymbolicLink
ListDirs
ListFiles
MkDir
NCREATE
NGET
NNAMES
NPUT
NormalizePath
PolishCurrentDir
PWD
RmDir
Version
FilesAndDirs needs version 16.0 Unicode of Dyalog APL, or better.