Feature or enhancement

For typing and documentation purposes, it would be useful to define three protocols in pathlib:

• Parser: like os.path, but including only pure functionality that's essential for PurePathBase
  • This already exists, but it's defined and used in an odd way.
• DirEntry: like os.DirEntry, but without some non-portable methods (like inode())
• StatResult: like os.stat_result, but without the tuple-like interface, and dropping non-essential attributes

These could be defined in a private module like pathlib._types. For performance reasons that module shouldn't be imported by any other pathlib module.

If/when we make PathBase public, we'll also make these protocols public.

See also: https://discuss.python.org/t/make-pathlib-extensible/3428/196

Linked PRs

• GH-127456: pathlib ABCs: add protocol for path parser #127494
• GH-127456: pathlib ABCs: remove Parser.sep #127725