[Python-Dev] pathlib handling of trailing slash (Issue #21039) (original) (raw)

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Thu Aug 7 04:12:30 CEST 2014

Antoine Pitrou <antoine at python.org> writes:

Le 06/08/2014 20:50, Alexander Belopolsky a écrit : > There are many interfaces where trailing slash is significant. […] > Loosing it when passing path strings through pathlib.Path() may be a > source of bugs.

pathlib is generally concerned with filesystem operations written in Python, not arbitrary third-party tools.

The operating system shell is more than an “arbitrary third-party tool”, though; it preserves paths, and handles invoking commands.

You seem to be saying that ‘pathlib’ is not intended to be helpful for constructing a shell command. Will its documentation warn that is so?

Also it is probably easy to append the trailing slash in your command-line invocation, if so desired.

The trouble is that one can desire it, and construct a path knowing that the presence or absence of a trailing slash has semantic significance; and then have it unaccountably altered by the pathlib.Path code. This is worse than preserving the semantic value.

-- \ “But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion? Each week we | `\ just make God madder and madder.” —Homer, The Simpsons | o_) | Ben Finney

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