Mojo::File: Overload slash / for intuitive appending of child directories / files

[perlpunk]

Hi, I enjoy working with pythons pathlib and its overloading of the slash, and it would be nice if I could do that with Mojo::File as well.

A quick & dirty proof of concept:

use Mojo::File qw/ path /;
my $p = path("lib");
$p /= "Mojo";
say $p / "UserAgent";
say +($p / "UserAgent" / ".." / "Server")->realpath;
__END__
lib/Mojo/UserAgent
/tmp/Mojolicious-9.49/lib/Mojo/Server

diff --git a/lib/Mojo/File.pm b/lib/Mojo/File.pm
index 508d977..5ecfa19 100644
--- a/lib/Mojo/File.pm
+++ b/lib/Mojo/File.pm
@@ -1,6 +1,12 @@
 package Mojo::File;
 use Mojo::Base -strict;
-use overload '@{}' => sub { shift->to_array }, bool => sub {1}, '""' => sub { ${$_[0]} }, fallback => 1;
+use overload '@{}' => sub { shift->to_array }, bool => sub {1}, '""' => sub { ${$_[0]} },
+"/" => \&_child, fallback => 1;
+
+sub _child {
+    my ($x, $y) = @_;
+    return $x->child($y);
+}
 
 use Carp                  qw(croak);
 use Cwd                   qw(getcwd);

What do others think?

[Leont]

It probably should handle argument reversal as well (even if that's not terribly likely).

[Grinnz]

Personally I disagree with overloading operators to do something different than their intention, especially as different as this would be. In this case additionally, it means / can no longer be assumed to be a numeric operator.

[s1037989]

It's a neat idea and seems to work well as a role.  Could also overload the concat operator.

package Mojo::File::Role::Overload;
use Mojo::Base -role;

use overload "/" => \&_child, "." => \&_child, fallback => 1;

sub _child { shift->child(shift) }

1;

$ perl -I. -Mojo -E '(f->with_roles("+Overload")->new(".")/"Mojo"/"File"/"Role"/"Overload.pm")->tap(sub{c($_->dirname, $_->basename(".pm"), $_->extname)->join(" | ")->say})'
Mojo/File/Role | Overload | pm

$ perl -I. -Mojo -E '(f->with_roles("+Overload")->new(".")."Mojo"."File"."Role"."Overload.pm")->tap(sub{c($_->dirname, $_->basename(".pm"), $_->extname)->join(" | ")->say})'
Mojo/File/Role | Overload | pm

@Leont What's an example of handling argument reversal?