How py.path ate my files

# How py.path ate my files
"""
Yesterday I realized, the `Pictures` folder had vanished from my hard drive. It wasn't corrupted or anything, it was just gone. I wasted some time trying to recover lost files and checking the hard drive's health, but nothing came up. Apart from the missing files, everything seemed to work. A mystery that left me with a bad feeling about my computer's integrity.
I continued my work and moved on. Finally last night, it struck me: on the evening of the day before the loss I was trying to write a test for a piece of code that reads small text files from the hard drive. Easy enough with `pytest`, use `tempdir` in the test's signature, write the file and call the target with the file path.
"""

def test_target_read_from_file(tempdir):
  sourcefile = tempdir.join("testfile.txt").write("Hello World!")
  assert target.read(sourcefile) == "Hello World!"

"""
Now, above test raises a `TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, LocalPath found`. Oh?

It turns out `tempdir` resolves to a `py.path.local` object and the target code works with the `os.path` module. So off, to read the `py.path` documentation (http://py.readthedocs.io/en/latest/path.html#reference-documentation), there surely will be a method to get the file path from the `sourcefile`-object. Hmm...which one will it be?
http://py.readthedocs.io/en/latest/path.html#py._path.local.LocalPath.purebasename goes the right direction:
"""
import py.path
p = py.path.local()
print p
# >>> local('/home/user')
print p.purebasename
# >>> 'user'

"""
Well, let's look again. http://py.readthedocs.io/en/latest/path.html#py._path.local.LocalPath.parts returns a list of `py.path.local` objects, so that is definitely worse...
After spending too much time reading the docs and desperately trying, I was ready to do apply brute force. After all, I am a programmer and the computer has to serve me. Having sailed all sorts of heavy weathers, my time had come to outsmart the (obviously) terrible library:
"""

from operator import methodcaller

for m in [m for m in dir(p) if not p.startswith('_')]:
  try:
    print methodcalller(m)(p), m
  except:
    print ":(", m

# NOTE: there is an error in the loop as a safeguard. You do not want to run that code!!!

"""
I hit enter. After roughly two seconds, I cancelled the loop. It did not feel right anymore...I raise my head and disturb my coworker's zen to ask:

- "I feel, that I'm stupid, but how the hell do I get the plain path from a `py.path.local` object?"
- "Ah, it may not be the most intuitive, but: just create a string from the object :)"

Phew. Mystery solved, test finished. Finally: beer!

...and humiliation: after realizing what happened, I must conclude that this was probably the stupidest thing I did on a computer in a long time.

TLDR; don't randomly run all functions of a python object just because you can! Especially so, when dealing with the file system.
"""