I can think of two approaches to this.

  1. resolve paths with /../ in Unix by actually walking the directory tree and resolving symlinks as they are arrived at. If at some point you find that your path doesn't match the correct system then you revert to the behavior of the other File::Spec::<OS> modules which operate without reference to what is actually on the filesystem.
  2. Just do the clean up without referring to the file system, without respect to the possibility of symlinks in your path. The other OS's versions of canonpath (as I just mentioned) actually behave this way -- they don't care if your path really exists on the current system or not -- they're just doing string manipulation.

Either solution would have to be implemented by adding a new method to File::Spec to preseve existing functionality. This method would just be a synonym for canonpath in most File::Spec::<OS> modules, being different only for the Unix one.

--DrWhy

"If God had meant for us to think for ourselves he would have given us brains. Oh, wait..."

In reply to Re^2: Making File::Spec cross platform by DrWhy
in thread Making File::Spec cross platform by DrWhy

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