BlindAnagram <blindanag...@nowhere.com> writes: > On 27/05/2020 13:30, Ben Bacarisse wrote: >> BlindAnagram <blindanag...@nowhere.com> writes: >> >>> The issue that I raised here was whether the behaviour of os.path.join() >>> in treating the Windows directory separator '\\' as an absolute path >>> should be considered a bug. >> >> You think it should be considered to be a relative path? The only >> meaning that would give you want you wanted from >> >> os.path.join(<something>, '\\') >> >> would be to treat it as being relative to the drive and to the >> directory. In other words you want '\\' to be a synonym for '.' The >> usual meaning of '\\' (outside of this specific function) is "root on >> the current drive" but that can't sensibly be appended to any path. >> >>> The behaviour of join came up for me when I tried to use the os.path >>> functions to create a path that could only ever be used as a directory >>> and never a file. The only way that I found to designate a path as a >>> directory path was to add '\\' at the end. But this doesn't work in >>> using os.path becaause the other os.path functions just strip it off and >>> turn the directories back into files. >> >> Nothing about the name can turn a directory into a file (or vice versa). >> If c:\x\y is a file, calling it c:\x\y\ won't change that, but it might >> give you an error when you try to access it. That may be what you want. >> If so, appending '.' is likely to be more portable. > > That is true if you know for sure how your path will be used. > > But if you don't, there is a world of difference between passing the > paths 'name' and 'name\\' on for others to use. And in this situation it > doesn't help when os.path functions strip the directory separator off.
As it should. Relying on a trailing \ having the right effect is brittle to say the least. > This situation resulted in a bug that was surprisingly hard to track > down because it created hidden files instead of directories as > intended. If so, the bug is not in os.path.join and trying to fix it by insisting that a path have trailing \ may well just stacking up more problems for later. > After finding and correcting the '\\' that had been stripped off, the > desired directories couldn't then be creaated on the target because > hidden files were present with these names. As I said, that's a dodgy thing to rely on. It may be that you can't fix the bug any other way (some aspect of the overall design may be broken), but I would urge you to try. There is well-known (*nix) software that relies on a/b/c/ meaning something different to a/b/c but I don't know anyone who thinks this is a good idea. It causes no end of confusion. -- Ben. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
