Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

I propose we add a pathlib.Path.metadata() method that requires a keyword-only cached argument, e.g.:

>>> m = pathlib.Path('README.txt').metadata(cached=True)
>>> m
Metadata('README.txt')
>>> m.is_file()
True

If cached is True, the method may return a Metadata object that was previously fetched and cached. If False, the return value is always up-to-date.

pathlib.Path.info should be soft-deprecated; its implementation should call self.metadata(cached=True)

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

I have already discussed this feature proposal on Discourse

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

https://discuss.python.org/t/ergonomics-of-new-pathlib-path-scandir/71721/70