[Python-Dev] Add os.path.resolve to simplify the use of os.readlink (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Thu Jun 21 16:48:00 CEST 2012

On Thu, 21 Jun 2012 10:23:25 -0000 "Armin Ronacher" <armin.ronacher at active-4.com> wrote:

Due to an user error on my part I was not using os.readlink correctly. Since links can be relative to their location I think it would make sense to provide an os.path.resolve helper that automatically returns the absolute path:

def resolve(filename): try: target = os.readlink(filename) except OSError as e: if e.errno == errno.EINVAL: return abspath(filename) raise return normpath(join(dirname(filename), target))

Note that abspath() is buggy in the face of symlinks, for example it will happily collapse /etc/foo/../bar into /etc/bar, even though /etc/foo might be a link to /usr/lib/foo

The only safe way to collapse ".." elements is to resolve symlinks.

Regards

Antoine.

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