[feature request] providing Lua APIs to manipulate files

[haolian9]

Hi, this issue follows the previous discuss.

Why need such Lua APIs for plugins:

• trigger proper events
• cross-platform
• able to undo operations

Which API are needed (from my perspective, speak in vifm commands):

• :rename
• :delete
• :move
• :mkdir
• :touch

[xaizek]

There are actually two separate groups of operations here: high-level (you've listed them) and low-level.

Low-level would be for cross-platform operations that don't trigger events or allow for undo, because you don't want to undo creation of a temporary file or stuff like that.

Among high-level ones, list rename is definitely needed to handle non-trivial renames (a -> b, b -> a). Overall this will need more thought in dealing with undo/redo, although initially undo can be done per operation.

[haolian9]

how about exposing vle_cmds_run (or something i dont know) to lua? with it, lua can do what vifm script can. and it partly avoids providing the same APIs in vifm script and lua sides.

[xaizek]

how about exposing vle_cmds_run (or something i dont know) to lua? with it, lua can do what vifm script can. and it partly avoids providing the same APIs in vifm script and lua sides.

Bad idea. :commands are not regular, it's impossible to guarantee proper escaping of arguments and their interaction with views and managing of state (like for conditionals) will very likely create serious problems (think calling Lua handler that calls :command from inside another :command). It will also be like mixing VimL with Python and calling from one into another with things falling apart due to escaping, I've seen that a lot with clang_complete and don't want to allow it.