The following solution is not perfect, but works for me most of the time (the version below assumes that $path points to a subdir, but it can easily be adapted to the general case in which $path can also point to a file): 

sub cleanpath {
  my $path;
  use Cwd;
  my $cwd = cwd;
  chdir $path or die "Can't chdir to $path: $!\n";
  my $cleanpath = cwd;
  chdir $cwd or die "Can't return to $cwd$ $!\n";
  return $cleanpath;
}

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The principal shortcoming of this approach is that it only applies to directories that your program can visit; this excludes non-existent directories, unfortunately. (Hence, a more useful implementation, unlike the sketch above, would not simply die if it fails to visit the input path.)

Basically, in Unix, if a symbolic links render the path notation ambiguous; in the simplest terms, if foo points to some (non-symbolic) directory bar, then the formal expression foo/.. is ambiguous, because it can be interpreted as either the parent of foo or the parent of bar. (In fact, even foo/. is ambiguous.) The definition of "cleaning up a path" hinges on how you want to resolve this ambiguity. There are uses for both forms of clean-up.

the lowliest monk

In reply to Re: Cleaning up a path by tlm
in thread Cleaning up a path by polettix

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