filesystem

A filesystem Lua module based on the std::filesystem C++ standard library.

Features

The filesystem module supports the same features as std::filesystem does.
This includes the following;

• File operations such as copy, remove and renaming.
• Iterating (recursively) through directories.
• Create and remove symbolic links and hard links.
• Querying permissions and the type of a filesystem entry.
• Modifying permissions.

Requirements

• Lua version 5.3 or 5.4
• C++17 or newer compatible C++ compiler

Examples

Path utilities

local fs = require( "filesystem" )

local p        = fs.path( "/home/foo/bar.txt" )
local root_dir = p:root_directory()
local filename = p:filename()
local has_ext  = p:has_extension()

p:replace_filename( "buz.bak" )

print( root_dir )
print( filename )
print( has_ext )
print( p )

The output is:

/
bar.txt
true
/home/foo/buz.bak

Copy file

local fs = require( "filesystem" )

-- Create source path object
local src = fs.path( "/home/foo/bar.txt" )

-- Create a copy of the source path object
local dst = fs.path( str )

-- Change extension of the copied file to 'bak'
dst:replace_extension( "bak" )

-- Perform copy
fs.copy( src, dst )

Iterating files in a directory

local fs = require( "filesystem" )

-- Iterate (non-recursive) through the entries of the given directory
for e in fs.directory( "./test/tests/foo" ) do
    -- 'e' is an directory_entry object containing information about the
    -- currently visited entry in the directory.

    -- Don't show directories in the output.
    if not e:is_directory() then
        print( e )
    end
end

Error handling

local fs = require( "filesystem" )

-- Wrap one or more filesystem functions that could fail in a function
local function may_fail( src, dst )
    fs.create_symlink( src, dst )
end

-- Execute filesystem operations
local success, result = pcall( may_fail, "/home/foo/bar.txt", "/home/foo/baz.txt" )

-- No errors occured when 'success' is true. In this case 'result' contains
--   the return value of 'may_fail' which in this example returns nothing.
-- If 'success' is false then an error occured and 'result' is a message
--   with information about error that hapend.

if not success then
    print( result )
end

Building the filesystem Lua module

You can build the module by executing the following command in the project directory;

make all

This library has only one cpp-file without external dependencies besides Lua which that simplifies integration into other projects or your own build system.

Tests

There are tests to validate the Lua API of the filesystem module and should run on Unix-like OSs and Windows.

You can find these tests in the tests directory.

Execute the following command to run the tests;

lua test/main.lua

Or using the makefile;

make test