Familiarizing on the ISftpFile etc

[mwpowellhtx]

Picking up for the first time the library for SFTP concerns and learning the ISftpFile as sort of the nerve center of the operation, upon which we abstract out the directory exchange idea, equating both the upstream listed item with any mirror items.

Couple of questions about it, forgive me if perhaps this is TL;DR ground covered by the wiki.

First, I liken it, analogous to the FluentFTP FtpListItem, for example.

Second, because naming is hard, I get it... ISftpFile bit of a misnomer isn't it? This is basically the listed item concept, may be a file, could be a directory, and so on? Is there any other indicator what things are, other than just some bool properties? That couldn't have been a Flags enum, for instance? Are there valid combinations? For instance, directory and symbolic? Or perhaps a better, more inclusive, question is, what are the valid combinations?

Third, are those active instances in the sense they are refreshing from upstream sources? I gather they are not. I do not see any parent or children properties, for instance, which is fine. We have DEX patterns that enumerate these things recursively, so no worries there.

Fourth, and last question, for now, I see time stamps such as last accessed and write, not sure what the difference is there, in fact, could argue those are the same thing. Where is CREATED, just as important, in some cases moreso IMO, in its own right.

[Rob-Hague]

First, I liken it, analogous to the FluentFTP FtpListItem, for example.

It looks like it yes, but I've never looked at that repo before

ISftpFile bit of a misnomer isn't it? This is basically the listed item concept, may be a file, could be a directory, and so on?

Yes, "file" here is the overloaded term for "file system item"

Is there any other indicator what things are, other than just some bool properties? That couldn't have been a Flags enum, for instance? Are there valid combinations? For instance, directory and symbolic? Or perhaps a better, more inclusive, question is, what are the valid combinations?

No, there are no valid combinations

Third, are those active instances in the sense they are refreshing from upstream sources? I gather they are not. I do not see any parent or children properties, for instance, which is fine. We have DEX patterns that enumerate these things recursively, so no worries there.

Right, they are not automatically refreshing

Fourth, and last question, for now, I see time stamps such as last accessed and write, not sure what the difference is there, in fact, could argue those are the same thing. Where is CREATED, just as important, in some cases moreso IMO, in its own right.

They come from the section 5 of the SFTPv3 specification (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-02). Createtime was added in the SFTPv4 specification, which is not widely supported

The SFTP spec closely follows Unix/POSIX conventions. I would recommend reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_file_types

[mwpowellhtx]

Good to know, appreciate the clarification.