While a little out of the target of my OP, I've found that Cwd actually has something that really cleans up a path dealing with all the symlink issues:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use Cwd 'abs_path';

my $somepath = "/var/log/../../home/poletti/../../etc/passwd";

print "starting path: [$somepath]\n";
print "abs_path     : [", abs_path($somepath), "]\n"

__END__
starting path: [/var/log/../../home/poletti/../../etc/passwd]
abs_path     : [/etc/passwd]

[download]
According to the docs:
       abs_path
             my $abs_path = abs_path($file);

           Uses the same algorithm as getcwd().  Symbolic links and re
+lative-
           path components ("." and "..") are resolved to return the c
+anonical
           pathname, just like realpath(3).

[download]
This probably requires that the file actually lives in the filesystem, but most of the time it's what one wants. Thank you all for the contributions, anyway :)

Flavio
perl -ple'$_=reverse' <<<ti.xittelop@oivalf

Don't fool yourself.

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

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.