Memory File System

Usage

Memory File System is an in-memory file system that supports many of the standard UNIX commands. Instantiating a MemoryFileSystem object creates an empty file system starting at root:

from memory_fs.memory_fs import MemoryFileSystem

fs = MemoryFileSystem()
fs.pwd()

'/'

Typical file system commands like mkdir, cd, and ls are supported:

fs.mkdir('company')
fs.mkdir('company/organization0')
fs.cd('company')
fs.pwd()

'/company'

fs.mkdir('organization1')
fs.ls()

['organization0', 'organization1']

A simplified walk command is available, which helps illustrate the files and directories created so far:

fs.walk('/')

/company
/company/organization0
/company/organization1

Files can be written and read with touch, write, and read commands:

fs.cd('organization0')
fs.touch('employee0.txt')
fs.write('employee0.txt', 'Name: Newton Le')
fs.touch('employee1.txt')
fs.write('employee1.txt', 'Name: Tiffany Smith')
fs.read('employee0.txt')

'Name: Newton Le'

fs.walk('/')

/company
/company/organization0
/company/organization0/employee0.txt
/company/organization0/employee1.txt
/company/organization1

cp and mv commands work, with recurisve folder merging and automatic file name collision handling:

fs.cp('/company', '/company2')
fs.touch('/company/organization0/employee2.txt')
fs.walk('/')

/company
/company/organization0
/company/organization0/employee0.txt
/company/organization0/employee1.txt
/company/organization0/employee2.txt
/company/organization1
/company2
/company2/organization0
/company2/organization0/employee0.txt
/company2/organization0/employee1.txt
/company2/organization1

fs.mv('/company', '/company2')
fs.walk('/')

/company2
/company2/organization0
/company2/organization0/employee0.txt
/company2/organization0/employee1.txt
/company2/organization0/employee0.txt (1)
/company2/organization0/employee1.txt (1)
/company2/organization0/employee2.txt
/company2/organization1

of course files and directories can be removed with rm:

fs.rm('/company2/organization0', recursive=True)
fs.walk('/')

/company2
/company2/organization1

absolute and relative paths with . and .. are also supported:

fs.cd('/company2/organization1')
fs.mkdir('/company3')
fs.mkdir('../organization2')
fs.mkdir('../../company3/organization0')
fs.walk('/')

/company2
/company2/organization1
/company2/organization2
/company3
/company3/organization0

TODO

• symlinks and hardlinks can be supported. Using FileContent object, hardlinks can use the same abstractions that point to the same contents
• unit tests for all classes beyond the top-level class
• docstrings for all classes beyond the top-level class
• sphinx autodoc to produce API documentation