Feature #12843: Proposal to add a new method to class File in order to determine the name of the file without any suffix

• Status: Open
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -

[shevegen (Robert A. Heiler)]

We currently have File.basename() and File.dirname(), both of which
work very well and are quite useful when working with files and
directories.

When you want to get the filename without extension, you can use
something like this:

File.basename('foo/bar/test.rb', '.rb')
File.basename('foo/bar/test.rb', '.*')

While this works very well, I was wondering if it would be possible
to add a method that does precisely that for you but which requires
only one argument - the path. That would allow us to omit the ','
and the second argument, which I think would be nice to have.

Resulting ruby code may be a tiny bit shorter:

File.basename('foo/bar/test.rb', '.*')
File.methodXY('foo/bar/test.rb')

Where .methodXY() should be the name of the new method added.

I would thus like to suggest a way for a new method addition, on the
class File namespace, just like .basename() and .dirname(), that will
return the filename of a given path/file, but without any suffix and
without any path - so, similar to File.basename() but to additionally
already chop away all extname suffixes.

Giving things a proper, meaningful name is often difficult. In
particular when method names should ideally be short; both
.dirname and .basename are quite short too.

My obvious choice would be:

File.filename()

But I am not sure if this is a good name. A problem is that I
can not come up with a better name.

We also already have File.extname() in order to determine the
"extension name" of the file.

https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/File.html#method-c-extname

So we essentially have 3 behaviours - obtain the name of the
directory via .dirname; obtain the name of the file/entry itself,
via .basename; and being able to obtain the name of the extension
via .extname.

What we actually appear to be missing is to obtain the part
of the name of a path/file/directory WITHOUT the extension
and WITHOUT the leading dirname part.

If File.filename() is not a good name then perhaps any of the
following may serve as better alternatives; some are obviously
not really great names though, I add them mostly for comparison:

File.no_suffix()
File.corename()
File.corefile()
File.shortname()
File.short_name()
File.sname()
File.filename_without_extension() # Probably too verbose but
  # probably more descriptive than the other names

Anyway, I guess the name of the method is one thing - if the
functionality itself would be approved, then I am sure a good
name can be found for the functionality anyway if none of
the above are very good choices. I just thought that it should
fit towards .dirname .basename and .extname, hence why I put
.filename first.

Thanks for reading!

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Description updated (diff)

Robert A. Heiler wrote:

I would thus like to suggest a way for a new method addition, on the
class File namespace, just like .basename() and .dirname(), that will
return the filename of a given path/file, but without any suffix and
without any path - so, similar to File.basename() but to additionally
already chop away all extname suffixes.

Maybe what is called as "stem" in GNU make document?

File.filename()

It sounds like same as basename.

What we actually appear to be missing is to obtain the part
of the name of a path/file/directory WITHOUT the extension
and WITHOUT the leading dirname part.

What about WITHOUT the extension but WITH the leading dirname part?

File.no_suffix()

It sounds like keeping the prefix.

File.corename()
File.corefile()

"core" has a different meaning.

File.shortname()
File.short_name()
File.sname()

These remind me a Windows short file name.

File.filename_without_extension() # Probably too verbose but
  # probably more descriptive than the other names

No ambiguity, but, too verbose.

[Eregon (Benoit Daloze)]

What is your use-case?

If it's to append another extension, Pathname#sub_ext might interest you.
Actually, it can even be used to remove the extension:

Pathname("dir/file.ext").sub_ext("") # => #<Pathname:dir/file>

In path (https://github.com/eregon/path), I named this operation rm_ext.
It also keeps the dirname part as nobu mentions, so what you would need is

Path("dir/file.ext").rm_ext.basename
# or
Path("dir/file.ext").basename.rm_ext

I think it's good to separate these two concerns as they compose well.

If one wants to use raw strings, then I think File.basename(path, ".*") is already quite short.