[Python-Dev] Re: os.path.commonprefix breakage (original) (raw)

M.-A. Lemburg mal@lemburg.com
Fri, 18 Aug 2000 17:41:14 +0200

Gordon McMillan wrote:

M.-A. Lemburg wrote: > ... just look at what your browser does > when you request http://www.python.org/search ... the server > redirects you to search/ to make sure that the links embedded in > the page are relative to search/ and not www.python.org/. While that seems to be what Apache does, I get 40x's from IIS and Netscape server. Greg Ewing's demonstrated a Unix where the trailing slash indicates nothing useful, Tim's demonstrated that Windows gets confused by a trailing slash unless we're talking about the root directory on a drive (and BTW, same results if you use backslash). On WIndows, os.path.commonprefix doesn't use normcase and normpath, so it's completely useless anyway. (That is, it's really a "string" function and has nothing to do with paths).

I still don't get it: what's the point in carelessly dropping valid and useful information for no obvious reason at all ?

Besides the previous behaviour was documented and most probably used in some apps. Why break those ?

And last not least: what if the directory in question doesn't even exist anywhere and is only encoded in the path by the fact that there is a slash following it ?

Puzzled by needless discussions ;-),

Marc-Andre Lemburg

Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/