frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Path is a utility for working with paths

https://gitlab.com/SpyrjaGaldr/path
60•spyrja•1y ago
A recent post here got me thinking about my own personal gripes with OS path handling offerings. So I've basically spent the passed couple of days working on a little project in an attempt to rectify the situation somewhat (in the spirit of cross-platform development). It should also work pretty well with existing tools. Let me know what you think, and feel free to open an issue or a pull-request if you have any problems getting it running it on your system. Enjoy!

Github link: https://github.com/SpyrjaGaldr/path

https://simonsafar.com/2025/path_as_system_call/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43788728

Comments

vesinisa•1y ago
What can this do that standard Unix find can not do?
autobodie•1y ago
cross platform support, according to the description.
indemnity•1y ago
fd exists https://github.com/sharkdp/fd
spyrja•1y ago
Looks like it has a pretty good interface as well. It does however seem a just a bit too top-heavy (lot's of dependencies) not to mention a few more bugs than I particularly care for. But sheesh, 37K stars, it must be good for something!
blooalien•1y ago
> ... "it must be good for something!"

It's good for finding files fast, and piping the resulting file paths into other tools for further action / handling. It does what it claims to do and does it well. :)

spyrja•1y ago
I would say the default behaviour just isn't very ergonomic. Suppressing warnings for example requires piping to /dev/null (whereas `path` supresses permission warnings by default), if you want to limit the number of results you have to pipe the output to another command, getting xargs-like behaviour (obviously), or putting quotes around lines with embedded spaces, there are simply more hoops to jump through. It's much easier to type "path -sf .jpg .jpeg .png" than whatever would be required to get the `find` utility to do the same. (Or, say, finding all node_modules folders with "path -z n_m", it's just so much more satisfying.) But yes, these are mostly just syntactic-sugar kinds of issues. Aside from that (and perhaps the lack of cross-platform compatibility), I would say there is nothing inherently deficient about the `find` command. It's a work-horse which probably has more features than `path` does. But the latter really is growing on me. It is actually quite fun to use, if I may say so myself!
jimbokun•1y ago
“A more ergonomic find command” is a nice elevator pitch.
pimlottc•1y ago
From the name and description, I expected this to perform operations on file path strings, like convert relative to absolute (and vice versa), expand symlinks, convert unix paths to dos, etc. This is more like a find command.
spyrja•1y ago
I don't see why it necessarily couldn't, my only question would be if there are really many actual use cases for such things? As far as symlinks go, I suppose being able to expand them (but not following them!) might be somewhat useful. But converting to DOS paths and vice-versa? That just doesn't seem very useful. Nevermind converting to-and-fro relative and absolute paths, I can't even imagine what the point of that would be. But perhaps I'm just not seeing the forest for the trees, as they say.
qrobit•1y ago
As a rule of thumb I always make paths absolute when handling files in scripts. But then sometimes I need to copy a directory tree relative to $CWD somewhere else, so I convert them back to relative

Fish, being a great shell, provides this via `path` command[0]

[0]: https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/path.html

jl6•1y ago
> for the primary purpose of helping other programs know where to find stuff

Potential footgun to make a program rely on this to locate, say, a shared library (as in one of the examples), if there’s a possibility that someone has smuggled a malware’d version of it into, say, /tmp, since it defaults to searching the root directory.

spyrja•1y ago
Kind of, but also kind of not. I mean if someone can smuggle a file into some random directory, chances are they have enough access to write directly to the "correct" folder to begin with. Personally I wouldn't execute or otherwise load any sort of executable content from a non-root directory (although certainly there are many people who wouldn't even think twice before doing such a thing). So it really just boils down to having a sane security-policy. Restrict searches with something like "path -d /usr *" and you are guaranteed not to scoop-up something that was world-writable in the first place. In fact in the example given in the README, that is precisely how that would have worked. Both /lib32 and /lib64 are owned by "root" and hence not a concern.
jl6•1y ago
Naturally every footgun is guaranteed to be safe as long as you use it right :)

I wonder if a safer default would be to start searches at the current directory rather than the root directory?

spyrja•1y ago
I did actually consider that at one point, but eventually decided against it because I felt would have meant a sacrifice in performance; first you'd do the local search, then start at the very top and recurse back down, checking every single entry against the local path to be sure that you don't do the local traversal all over again. Fortunately the code base is very clean and straight-forward, so it would be a fairly trivial excercise to just fork the repo and make those changes yourself to get that kind of behaviour.
account-5•1y ago
I've been finding nushell's `ls` with a where clause is pretty good for this. There's also the `find` command too.
spyrja•1y ago
Well I ran a bunch of tests and it turns out that the performance wasn't actually impacted very much after all. So the changes are official. I also made some other adjustments to the default behaviour; if no pattern is specified then it just matches everything. In other words, "path -f" prints every regular file in the filesystem (starting in the current one). Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, otherwise I may not gone down that (decidedly satisfying) rabbit-hole!

Beware Management Consultants

https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/beware-management-consultants/
212•KolmogorovComp•1h ago•37 comments

Turbovec – Google's TurboQuant for vector search in Rust

https://github.com/RyanCodrai/turbovec
140•fittingopposite•2h ago•16 comments

The Amazon tax

https://seths.blog/2026/08/the-amazon-tax/
707•herbertl•7h ago•453 comments

Using the railway network as a flatbed scanner

https://philo.gay/linecam/
350•otherayden•8h ago•55 comments

Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

https://quantum5.ca/2026/08/16/fixing-bricked-amd-7040-series-framework-13-laptop-with-20-tools/
299•jp_sc•7h ago•196 comments

How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

https://www.ikea.com/se/en/customer-service/knowledge/articles/6f564c4d-2ccc-46de-b643-545a3948dc...
147•NaOH•2h ago•96 comments

Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative

https://cursor.com/changelog/origin-code-hosting
353•tomasreimers•1d ago•282 comments

Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

https://pixelcluster.dev/VRAM-Overcommit/
474•flaburgan•13h ago•222 comments

2,500-year-old sculpture discovered at UNESCO site in Turkey

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/08/07/colossal-2500-year-old-sculpture-discovered-turkey-une...
30•speckx•5d ago•7 comments

We've flown a radiation-blocking vest to the Moon and back, and it worked

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/weve-flown-a-radiation-blocking-vest-to-the-moon-and-back...
64•rbanffy•4d ago•25 comments

Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/memory-prices-climb-500-percent-in-12-months-up-to...
346•haunter•1d ago•269 comments

Pacing model development in an era of cyber-critical capabilities

https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/
31•j4mie•2h ago•11 comments

Launch HN: machine0 (YC S26) – Persistent CPU and GPU VMs from the CLI

https://machine0.io
41•bwm•4h ago•30 comments

Python Polars Cheatsheet (based on our O'Reilly book)

https://opensource.posit.co/resources/cheatsheets/polars/
136•jeroenjanssens•7h ago•25 comments

Data centers raise nearby temperatures by up to 4 degrees in Phoenix

https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/sustainablebuildings/article/7/2/024501/1233035/Data-Cente...
245•cwwc•3h ago•324 comments

Teaching my kid to code with a modern MUD

https://tau.dev/2026/08/07/canon
200•andrewjanke•6d ago•57 comments

Splitting a Git Commit

https://blog.gnoack.org/post/git-history-split
102•signa11•3d ago•53 comments

Show HN: Openleetcode – local LeetCode runner where tests live in the repo

https://github.com/therepanic/openleetcode
40•therepanic•5h ago•14 comments

Evolve: An incremental game about evolving a civilization

https://pmotschmann.github.io/Evolve/
38•frozenseven•3d ago•16 comments

Norway Should Buy OpenAI

https://www.onethousandmeans.com/p/norway-should-buy-openai
143•alexeigannon•1h ago•156 comments

Mycorrhizal Infrastructure Map

https://a-hidden-infrastructure.spun.earth/map
11•num42•3d ago•4 comments

Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/universal-health-coverage-could-save-one-trillion-dollars-and-...
590•karakoram•1d ago•682 comments

Show HN: macOS data protection keychain for Electron apps

https://github.com/biw/keychain-store
18•biwills•3h ago•1 comments

California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

https://grist.org/transportation/californias-new-tire-efficiency-rules-could-save-drivers-1b-a-year/
117•littlexsparkee•18h ago•150 comments

Babies born under sugar rationing grew into adults with lower cancer risk

https://theconversation.com/babies-born-under-sugar-rationing-grew-into-adults-with-lower-cancer-...
230•zeristor•6h ago•47 comments

Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

https://www.fairphone.com/nl/stories/the-fairphone-gen-6-is-all-about-giving-you-more
325•Vinnl•8h ago•166 comments

Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

191•sharts•1d ago•157 comments

Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/18/google-buys-crashed-airline-spirits-data-at-auct...
542•pseudolus•10h ago•371 comments

Rethinking Database Programming

https://acadia.engineering/blog/rethinking-database-programming
212•honungsburk•13h ago•118 comments

Code-native generation of highly programmable 3D assets (2026)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.22738
40•baigy•6h ago•37 comments