TL;DR

I proposed a pull request for Path::Tiny.

Some days ago I was using Path::Tiny (remember it?) and at a certain point I had an object pointing to a directory, where I wanted to save a file.

push DIVERSION

Being a paranoid, I’m always thinking about apocalyptic scenarios where saving the file is not atomic and something might go wrong mid-way, leaving me with a half-baked file. (Think about laundry-list level of data relevance to anyone’s life, of course).

The idiom I use in this case is:

• save the data in a temporary file in the same filesystem as the target;
• if saving and closing the file is fine, use rename to move the file to destination.

If we are on the right operating system and with the right filesystem, the second operation is atomic, which means:

• either saving the file goes wrong, in which case we are left with a half-baked temporary file and no target file at all, which is fine;
• or saving the file goes fine, but renaming it does not, in which case we have no target file again, which is fine;
• or everything goes fine, and we have our target file.

That is, either the target file is missing or it is there, there’s no midway.

pop

OK, so I’m with my Path::Tiny directory object, and first of all I want to create a temporary file in that directory. The module has a method for it, namely tempfile:

my $tempfile = Path::Tiny->tempfile(...);

How cute, a class method… a tiny, little class method… well there MUST be an instance method too, right?

RIGHT?!?

Well… no. There is issue #115 though, which deals exactly with this and has the following refreshing comment from Path::Tiny’s author and maintainer:

Interesting idea. It would really just mean setting the “DIR” option to the current path (unless a DIR option is provided). I’m open to a pull request as long as it includes tests, code and documentation.

So here I am, one day into Hacktoberfest, to propose a pull request to address this.

To be completely honest, it does not do what they are asking. I mean, I thought about the unless a DIR option is provided part in the comment, and in my (very) humble opinion in that case the object should still win over the option. If you want the option… then use the class method, it’s just more readable. Of course this is my take on this, and it can be changed quite easily.

Help me to cross as many fingers as possible 🤞🤞🤞 and… stay safe!