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Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:54:14 +0000
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] SplFileObject Countable
From: php@nickpope.me.uk (Nick Pope)

On 15/03/11 10:01, Peter Cowburn wrote:
> For countBytes() how is that different from SplFileInfo's getSize() ?
> As for countWords() and the others, I think this crosses the line (in
> my view) over what a "File Object" should provide.

Hi Peter & Sebastian,

Bah.  It isn't.  Obviously that was going to exist already, but was 
thinking about methods looking like countXXXXX() too much :)

Perhaps you are right, Peter, on your opinions about what a "file 
object" should provide.  I would think, in that case, that a 
getLineCount() shouldn't exist on the "file object" either.

Currently we have:

     SplFileInfo  -- information/metadata about a file.
          |
          V
    SplFileObject -- modify/access contents of a file.

It could make sense to subclass this to provide methods for accessing 
information about the contents of a file.  As for a name, I'm not sure 
what would be best, but perhaps something like "SplFileData".  Maybe 
someone else can come up with a better name?

Then you could have the following methods:

getByteCount() -- the same as getSize(), but for here for consistency.
getCharCount()
getLineCount()
getWordCount()
getLongestLine()

Another consideration is how these should behave if we have a binary 
file - am not sure what GNU wc does, but perhaps that is a starting 
point for deciding what should happen.

Also thought might be given to what other useful methods could be 
provided for getting information about the contents of a file.  Some 
ideas (sensible or otherwise!):

getShortestLine()
getEolFormat()
setEolFormat() -- allow switching between LF, CR and CRLF.
getLineIndent() -- Could return '\t', '  ', '    ', etc.
setLineIndent()
hasEmptyLines()
hasTrailingWhiteSpace()
...

It may also make sense to cache the result while the file is not 
modified as some of these operations could be expensive.

Anyway - I'll stop rambling.  I think this would be better than just 
hacking in a method for the sake of it.

Cheers,

Nick