I'm not sure if these dedicated methods make sense... it's just quite easy to get this done with the non-recursive variants.
With the new glob implementation from #5179 the overhead is really negligible.

Dir["path/**"] { |path| File.chmod(path, mode) }

@straight-shoota I'm thinking now if it stiil makes sense to have FileUtils in the stdlib - there are some non essentials methods like aliases to Dir and File, and others that can be done via the new glob implementation. But if I undestand correctly the implementation, we can't modify the root directory itself this way but the sub directories/files?

I realise there is already a precedence for using different method names for different modes in FileUtils, such as rm_r, but could we consider using either method overloads or default values which I feel would be a cleaner API.

So instead of:

def chmod_r(path, mode : Int)
  ...
end

We'd have:

def chmod(path, mode : Int, recurse : Bool = false)
  ...
end

I'd also prefer methods to be named for the conceptual action they take, rather than named after the historic way to take this action in an operating system's shell, and to use words rather than abbreviations or acronyms. So instead of rm, why not remove or delete? Instead of chmod, why not grant or something?

More generally, the use of _suffix method naming in Crystal to provide different ways of taking the same action does not seem idiomatic. Ruby may do this due to the lack of method overloading, however Crystal does not have this problem.

I feel the method name should equal the action taken, it should not equal the action taken + options applied to the action.

@j8r Yes, the root folder must be handled separtely, but I'd still prefer that over an additional method.

Maybe it would make sense to have something like Dir.walk_tree(path) which yields each item in that path to avoid globbing.

I agree with you @lachlan for the recurse Boolean, underscores are not elegant here. We can merge most of the methods of the FileUtils module to the File Object. mkdir_p, rm_r and cp_r can be also be changed this way.

In an other hand I disagree to replace all LibC references by new names, specially chmod which use an octal number like 0o750, or chown that use uids and gids. This are very specific arguments.

For mkdir(_p), which take only one argument, and optionally an other for the permission mode, why not:

Dir.create("dir/", recurse: true)
Dir.delete("dir/")

rm doesn't exist as is in the LibC, so replacing it by delete is good!

I very like the recurse - this translates an Unix argument to a Crystal one.

Please let's not discuss these advanced ideas in this PR, open a new issue for that.

Sorry, I open an issue

Issue opened at #5231

I close this PR. FileUtils, File and Dir will certainly be cleaned in the future and then a recursive approach will be implemented for most commands in the future.