[Python-Dev] splitext('.cshrc') (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Tue Mar 6 22:01:38 CET 2007

Phillip J. Eby schrieb:

I know I've written code like this that depends on the current behavior. It's useful to classify e.g. .svn directories or .*rc files by their "extension", so I'm honestly baffled by the idea of wanting to treat such files as not having an extension (as opposed to a possibly-unrecognized one).

I never considered it an extension. Ask 10 people around you to see what a leading dot on Unix in a file name means, and I would be suprised if more than one answered "it separates the file name from the extension". Most of them likely include "hidden file" in their answer, and the rest (of those who know anything about it) will say "dotfiles, not displayed by ls, and not included in globbing".

It really is a different dot from the one that separates the file name from its extension.

I also fail to see why it is useful to invoke splitext on a file name to find out whether it is .svn - I would rather check the file name itself.

It's unfortunate, of course, that people apparently relied on this behavior (is the code you are referring to publicly available? If so, where?)

Regards, Martin

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