pathmut is a path string manipulation utility

This was made because I'm tired of resorting to basename, dirname, cut -d. -f1 or whatever other random core util to just extract some information from paths.

Important to know this utility only works with path strings and doesn't touch the file system whatsoever.

$ pathmut
Mutate path strings

Usage: pathmut [OPTIONS] [COMMAND or COMPONENT]

Commands:
  get        Read a path component [default]
  delete     Remove a path component
  replace    Replace an existing path component
  set        Set a path component
  has        Check if a path component exists
  is         Ask questions about a file path
  normalize  Normalize a file path
  convert    Convert between unix and windows paths
  depth      Number of components before the last component.
  help       Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -n, --normalize   Normalize the path first
  -u, --as-unix     Parse paths as unix paths
  -w, --as-windows  Parse paths as windows paths
  -h, --help        Print help information
  -V, --version     Print version information

Components:
  ext      File extension
  stem     File stem
  prefix   File prefix
  name     File name
  parent   Parent of the file or directory
  disk     Disk of a windows path
  n        Ordinal of the nth component

Installation

For now, you have to build from source. The package is available on crates.io and can be installed with cargo.

cargo install pathmut

You can also build using nix if you have flakes enabled.

nix shell github:rutrum/pathmut

Future Development

I'd like this to be the all in one tool for manipulating path strings. This tool should never touch or look at the actual filesystem, which means it shouldn't be able to answer if a path exists, if something is a file, create files, etc.

I should be able to ask questions about path strings, like the following:

• Is the path valid, if it did exist?
• What is the depth of the path?

I should be able to work with multiple paths:

• Does path A begin with path B?
• Does path A end with path B?
• Is path B contained with path A?
• Join path A and path B together.

Why stop at paths? A command line utility built to mutate URIs like "scheme://user:pass@sub.domain.com/route?query=param#anchor" would have an almost identical API, and would even overlap with some path functionality. In the future, this library will expand to include URIs as well.

Changelog

0.7.0

• Normalize flag -n that can apply normalization to the paths before any command
• Flags to force parsing paths as windows -w or as unix -u paths
• Add is normal command which checks if a path string is normalized
• Add depth command which counts the number of components before the last
• Add disk component for Windows paths with disk prefix

0.6.0

• Specify nth component using negative indicies to count backwards, -1 for last component, etc.
• Add normalize command that removes .. and . from path appropriately
• Add convert command to convert between Windows and unix paths

0.5.0

• Rename replace to set
• Add replace command, which does not change paths when the component does not exist
• Windows and unix path support, independent of native OS
• Add is command which tests if paths are relative, absolute, windows, or unix
  • --print flag to print true/false instead of changing exit code
  • --any and --all flags for testing multiple paths
• Add has command for checking if a path component exists

0.4.0

• Remove --remove and --replace args with delete and replace commands
• Add get command (default behavior)
• Components are now arguments to get, delete, and replace
• Specify nth component by using number, 0 for first component, etc.
• Remove first component

0.3.0

• Add first command
• Add --remove and --replace arguments for every command
• Remove rmext command

0.2.0

• Show help by default
• Read from stdin, all at once
• Allow passing multiple file paths as args (not stdin)
• Add rmext command

0.1.0

• Add ext, stem, prefix, name, parent commands.