Recreating a path is not the same a editing one. Yes the end effect may be the same but it's a work around not being to edit an existing path.
Deleting a subpath just to tell if it was selected also seems to be to be an poor workaround to have DOM or Action Manager support for activeSubPath( or whatever they wish to call it ).
And I said it wasn't as easy to copy a subPath. You can copy a path with 5 lines of AM code. It takes quite a few more lines to read a path and create a new path from one of the subPaths.
But have at it. You may come up with something useful.