in reply to Test to see if directories are the same

Here's a simple way to test if two paths point to the same file or directory, using stat: 
sub matching_paths {
  my($path1, $path2) = @_;
  my(@stat1) = stat $path1;
  my(@stat2) = stat $path2;
  return $stat1[0] == $stat2[0] && $stat1[1] == $stat2[1];
}

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(stat)[0, 1] are the device number and the inode number, which together uniquely identify a file or directory.

I don't know how portable this solution is, however.

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Re: Re: Test to see if directories are the same
by merlyn (Sage) on Jan 17, 2001 at 23:54 UTC
    Or, a bit more obscure but very cool: 
    sub same_file_p {
  my @stat1 = stat shift;
  my @stat2 = stat shift;
  return "@stat1[0,1]" eq "@stat2[0,1]";
}

    [download]
    And even weirder: 
    sub all_same_file { # true if all arguments represent the same file
  my %counts;
  $counts{join " ", (stat)[0,1]}++ for @_; 
  1 == keys %counts;
}

    [download]

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      Inode numbers are not reported on Windows so the above is OS-specific, as is this version: 
      sub all_same_file {
  my @desc = map {my @s = stat; "@s[0,1]"} @_;
  @_ == grep {$desc[0] eq $_} @desc;
}

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

      And slightly weirder: 

      sub all_same_file {
    join(" ",map{(stat)[0,1]}@_) =~ /^(\d+ \d+) (\1 ?){$#_}$/;
}

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Cool Uses for Perl