signac view fails when statepoints contain forwardslashes

[klywang]

Description

signac view cannot create folders when statepoints contain forward slashes (ie, if a statepoint value is '/oasis/scratch/some_file.txt')

To reproduce

signac view

Example of statepoint:
{'pot_file': '/oasis/scratch/path/to/file/some_file.out'}

Error output

Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/oasis'### System configuration

Please complete the following information:

• Operating System [e.g. macOS]: macOS Moajve (10.14.4)
• Version of Python [e.g. 3.7]: 3.7.3
• Version of signac [e.g. 1.0]: 1.2.0

[vyasr]

I think the proper behavior here is to just throw a more descriptive error message. Right now it just gives a permission denied error in this case, we should at least change it to raise an Exception that informs the user why it doesn't work. I don't think that this is necessarily something that we should support, because it would require modifying the values to avoid containing file separators.

[csadorf]

I agree that adding a more descriptive error message and potentially suggesting a work-around is the way to go. We have been pretty liberal about what a state point key and value may contain as long as it is JSON-encodable and issues like that are kind of bound to happen.

My suggested solution is to explicitly check for os.sep in keys and values and simply error out. A potential work-around is to only include keys and values that do not contain these values.

@klywang Would that be a satisfactory solution?

[klywang]

@csadorf Yeah that sounds good!

[mikemhenry]

Just to clarify the behavior we want:
paths are okay in state points but will prevent view from working (with a helpful error message)

[vyasr]

Yes, I think that's the best option. We could potentially disallow them in 2.0, but I don't think it's necessary since it only causes problems for views.

[vyasr]

Resolved by #233.