File Manipulation

Introduction

This project introduces the steps that you must take to implement, build, and run a program in Go programming languages that manipulates files on the file system. You will learn how to use Makefiles to automatically build programs and copy their binaries to a suitable directory. The programs that you implement will demonstrate the use of conditional logic, the extraction and processing of command-line arguments, and the steps needed to read from and write to files.

Seeking Assistance

Even though the course instructor will have covered all of the concepts central to this project before you start to work on it, please note that not every detail needed to successfully complete the assignment will have been covered during prior classroom sessions. This is by design as an important skill that you must practice as you explore the depth and breadth in the field of operating systems. If you have questions about this project, please schedule a meeting with the course instructor during office hours.

Project Overview

After cloning this repository to your computer, please take the following steps:

Program Setup

Some of the source code for this project inspired by the content of the OSTEP book. Please make sure that you read chapters 2, 4, and 5 and to the slides on the course web site for more information about these programs!

• Make sure that you have installed the following programs on your laptop:
  • Gcc toolchain, especially the make command for running Makefiles.
  • Go programming language
  • C programming language
• Use the cd command to change into the directory for this repository.
• Review the Makefile in the project/golang/ directory to see the targets for the version of this project implemented in the Go programming language.
• The provided Makefile will work on the Linux and MacOS operating systems and, additionally, on GitHub Actions and inside of the OS-Sketch Docker container. You may need to revise portions of these Makefiles so that they work correctly on the Windows operating system.
• To build the Go program you need to run the following commands from the respective golang/ directory: make copy to build the bin/copy binary.
• If you are still learning more about the Go programming language you can refer to the tutorials that are available on the Go and Go by Example web sites.
• Remember, it is not necessary for you to take a "build" step for the Python program since the python interpreter will run the program without a compilation step.

Program Implementation

When you run the Go implementation of the copy program with the command ./project/golang/bin/copy files source.txt files destination.txt it will produce the following output:

Source Path: files/source.txt

Destination Path: files/destination.txt

Completed the copy from the source to the destination.

When you run the Python implementation of the copy program with the command python project/pylang/copy.py files source.txt files destination.txt it will produce the following output, which is the same as the output of the copy program implemented in Go.

Source Path: files/source.txt

Destination Path: files/destination.txt

Completed the copy from the source to the destination.

Please note that these programs will work with any type of text files that already exist in the source and destination directories. As such, you are encouraged to try the program with a wide variety of input text files of different sizes. With that said, you can initially ensure that your program is running correctly by using the source.txt and destination.txt files provided in the files directory of your GitHub repository. After running the version of the program implemented in either Go or Python, you check the destination.txt file to confirm that it now contains the contents of the source.txt file and that the contents of the source.txt file remain unchanged. Finally, it is worth noting that both of the programs should produce an error message when they are run with a filename, such as source1.txt, that does not exist in a specified directory, as in the following output example:

Source Path: files/source1.txt

Destination Path: files/destination.txt

Cannot copy due to incorrect source or destination path

As you implement both the Go and Python versions of the copy program, you should create them in such as a way so as to ensure that they operate correctly while only using the packages that are a part of the languages main libraries. This means that your program should not use an external dependencies from either other GitHub repositories or packages published in a package index like PyPI. With that said, you are welcome to implement your programs while using any of the packages that ship with the programming language.

Project Reflection

As you work on this project, you should regularly take time to reflect on the steps that you are taking and why you are taking them. Each time you run a program you should think about the inputs, outputs, and behavior of that program, jotting down notes to help you remember these insights. When you are writing Python and Go programs, please reserve time to reflect on the features of the language that you are learning and how the languages are similar to and different from each other. Finally, as you complete this project, make sure that you reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses and how you can improve in advance of the next project.

Automated Assessment

Please review the following notes about the way in which your project will be automatically assess in GitHub Actions:

• If you have already installed the GatorGrade program that runs the automated grading checks provided by GatorGrader you can, from the repository's base directory, run the automated grading checks by typing gatorgrade --config config/gatorgrade.yml.
• You may also review the output from running GatorGrader in GitHub Actions.
• Don't forget to provide all of the required responses to the technical writing prompts in the writing/reflection.md file.
• Please make sure that you completely delete the TODO markers and their labels from all of the provided source code. This means that instead of only deleting the TODO marker from the code you should delete the TODO marker and the entire prompt and then add your own comments to demonstrate that you understand all of the source code in this project.
• Please make sure that you also completely delete the TODO markers and their labels from every line of the writing/reflection.md file. This means that you should not simply delete the TODO marker but instead delete the entire prompt so that your reflection is a document that contains polished technical writing that is suitable for publication on your professional web site.