It looks like you can get a fairly good apporximation for samefile on win32. Currently I'm using the algorithm suggested by Tim Chase as it is "good enough" for my needs.
But if one wanted to add samefile to the ntpath module, here's the algorithm I would suggest: If the passed files do not exist, apply abspath and normcase to both and return the result of comparing them for equality as strings. If both paths pass isfile(), try the mecahnism linked to in this thread which opens both files at the same time and compares volume and index information. Return this result. If that raises an error (maybe they will not allow us to open them) Try comparing them using the approach suggested by Tim Chase, but if that works there should be some indication given that the comparison may not be accurate (raise a warning?). If that also fails, raise an error. This should allow samfile to be used on win32 in well over 99.9% of cases with no surprises. For the rest it will either return a result that is likely correct with a warning of some kind, or it will fail entirely. It's not perfect, but you can't acheive perfection here. It would, however, have far less surprises than newbies using == to compare paths for equality. And it would also make os.path.samefile available on another platform. os.path.sameopenfile could be implemented perfectly using the comparison of volume and index information alone (assuming you can get a win32 handle out of the open file object, which I think you can) If someone would be willing to write a patch for the ntpath tests I would be willing to implement samefile as described above or as agreed upon in further discussion. Then we can submit it for inclusion in the stdlib. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
