[Feature Request]: add "isHiddenFile" property on `fs` dirent

[kimlimjustin]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I found out that using the withFileTypes: true option on fs.readdirSync could return information of whether a file is a directory using the dirent.isDirectory() property, but there's no option to check whether a file is a hidden file. I googled and found out that I can check if a file is hidden in Unix simply by a file name pattern, but, not in windows. As a result, I have to code using c++ and make my own version of fs and call it via child_process, which just makes the program laggy and slower (needs about 100-200ms to load information of a directory whereas fs.readdirSync needs about 10-20ms to read a directory).

Describe the solution you'd like
Fs could provide an isHiddenFile or isHidden or whatever property that just gives information of whether a file/folder is hidden in the system.

Additional Information
For whoever needs a way to filter hidden file, you can do this by using FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN of GetFileAttributesA using c++ for the windows, or just by using this /(^|\/)\.[^\/\.]/ regex to implement it for UNIX-like operating system.

[bl-ue]

Hey @kimlimjustin! I'd recommend checking out #38809 — it has several functions relating to hidden file management.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-hidden might be of interest, too 🤔

[jasnell]

Ideally, if anything were to be done here, it would be implemented in libuv and surfaced via stat.

[kimlimjustin]

Hey @kimlimjustin! I'd recommend checking out #38809 — it has several functions relating to hidden file management.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-hidden might be of interest, too 🤔

Thanks for your comment! I've checked for the package source code and found out this

return basename.charAt(0) === '.'

which is literally just looking if the first character of the basename is a '.' which will of course works fine in Linux. However, hidden files on Windows not presented by the file name, indeed, if you take a look at files on C:\ , there'll be a lot of hidden files with just the proper name, ex: C:\\ProgramData does not start with '.' but still a hidden folder.

My proposal to these hidden items is, to look at the user OS, if it's Windows, we need to call the c++ things, maybe use the libuv (?) as @jasnell mentioned (I'm not familiar with libuv). Otherwise, on UNIX-like Operating Systems just return /(^|\/)\.[^\/\.]/.test(dirent.name)

To get clear, my feature request is the user will be able to get the property of whether a file/folder is hidden from the dirent returned from the {withFileTypes:true} option. The code will be something like this:

const files = fs.readdirSync(FilePath, { withFileTypes: true }).map(dirent => { return { "filename": dirent.name, "isDir": dirent.isDirectory(), "isHidden": dirent.isHidden() } })

Hope my comment is clear enough, best regards,
Justin

[bl-ue]

FYI — dirents on macOS and Windows can be hidden with or without a . at the start of the name.

[kimlimjustin]

FYI — dirents on macOS and Windows can be hidden with or without a . at the start of the name.

Yeah! That's why package like https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-hidden is useless, thus, I request to add isHidden property into fs.

[kimlimjustin]

For those who need this isHiddenFile feature, I've created a package to check it, however, I still hope fs could add this feature too!

[bl-ue]

Cool! Can you link its GitHub repository to the npm package?

[kimlimjustin]

Cool! Can you link its GitHub repository to the npm package?

I will, thanks!

[github-actions]

There has been no activity on this feature request for 5 months and it is unlikely to be implemented. It will be closed 6 months after the last non-automated comment.

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