Rename and publicize Base.Filesystem._readdirx

[LilithHafner]

We added _readdirx with an internal name to defer bikeshedding. Here's an issue for that bikeshed.

[LilithHafner]

Triage talked about this and came up with the following:

• readdir(DirEntry, path)

  • More discoverable on ?readdir
  • Extensible, e.g. readdir(Path, path) for a package that defines paths
  • Julia is all about shoving things into functions
  • Follows parse and JuliaSyntax.parse

• readdirentry(path)

  • More clear that it is different functionality

---

Nobody at triage wanted these names:

• readdirx(path)
• ls(path)
• parse(Vector{DirEntry}, path)

[ericphanson]

it would be nice if there was an abstraction also usable by S3, i.e. some readdir/walkdir style function that when used with s3 can give you back an iterable of objects which knows the metadata that we got for-free from list_objects_v2() or such (i.e. key, size, last modified, etag, etc).

I think readdir(DirEntry, path) could work for that where AWSS3 could define readdir(S3Entry, path::S3Path).

[oscardssmith]

I think readdir(S3Entry, path::S3Path) is a pretty great example of why readdir(DirEntry, path) is the way to go.

[vtjnash]

I feel like that is actually an argument against that API. The idea that I need to write readdir(typeof(path), path) seems quite strange to me.

[IanButterworth]

typeof(path), path seems like the wrong example. You don't want typeof(path) you want an "Entry" type, so readdir(S3Entry, path::S3Path) makes sense to me, assuming that readdir(path::S3Path) returns a list of Strings already.

[ericphanson]

readdir(path::S3Path) indeed returns a list of strings, while readdir(path::S3Path; join=true) returns a list of S3Paths.

[LilithHafner]

readdir(path::S3Path; join::Bool) is type unstable. It could be made type stable if it used two a type argument to determine return type rather than the value of join.

[ericphanson]

yes it is type unstable, but that seems necessary for join=true to have the semantic that you can operate on the outputs of readdir(path; join=true) with e.g. isfile, read, etc, which is the useful property of join=true, and the network call will likely be in ms compared to the microseconds of dynamic dispatch anyway. One could also hope that const-prop could eliminate the instability.

Anyway I bring it up here as a wart on the existing readdir design for non-string paths, with the hope that the design of this feature can keep them in mind a bit better.

[IanButterworth]

Realized here #55358