Re^2: CPAN Module for mixing Unix/Windows path

Though Path::Class seems to be really good (and maybe I should have used it in place of File::Spec from the beginning), I don't see how it can handle my case, as it seems to require the *caller* to already know which style the pathes are.

For example, when running the following piece of code:

use Path::Class;
foreach $s ('x/y','x\y') {
  $dir=Path::Class:Dir->new($s)->as_foreign('Unix');
  print "$dir\n";
}
[download]

I would have wished that this would output

  x/y
  x/y
[download]

no matter whether the application is running on Unix or on Windows. But on Unix (for example), I get

  x/y
  x\y
[download]

I understand the behaviour of Path::Class: It is not designed to look into a path string and guess from there what OS type it is supposed to be - but this is the very thing I'm looking for.

--
Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>

Comment on Re^2: CPAN Module for mixing Unix/Windows path Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: CPAN Module for mixing Unix/Windows path by lodin (Hermit) on Jun 05, 2008 at 18:01 UTC
I don't quite understand the problem. From the OP: Internally, I use / as a separator whenever possible. For path strings I get from the "outside", I use File::Spec to be OS independent. Do any paths come from somewhere else, that you can't keep track of and normalize? My point is that Path::Class, just as File::Spec which it uses internally, expects Unix style paths when run on Unix, and Windows style paths when run on Windows, unless you tell it otherwise. So for new never-before-seen paths you do `my $path = dir($from_outside)->as_foreign('Unix');` [download] and once they're internal, you just do `my $path = foreign_dir('Unix', $internal);` [download] Is this unapplicable to your problem? lodin	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: CPAN Module for mixing Unix/Windows path by rovf (Priest) on Jun 06, 2008 at 08:52 UTC
It is partiallly applicable. For nearly all pathes coming from the outside, I don't know whether they are Unix or Windows style. They might even be mixed, such as a/b\c\d/e. This is possible since we have the requirement (actually a very common requirement in mixed language projects), that certain characters are forbidden in directory/filenames. For example, no '\', no '@' etc. As said before, this is not difficult to implement, but I was thinking that maybe someone has already published utilities I could re-use. In practice, I have to normalize the path name before the first use, by (at least) converting the backslashes to forward slashes, but being careful with things like double backslash etc. -- Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>	[reply]
Re^3: CPAN Module for mixing Unix/Windows path by mandarin (Hermit) on Jun 05, 2008 at 12:48 UTC
I understand the behaviour of Path::Class: It is not designed to look into a path string and guess from there what OS type it is supposed to be - but this is the very thing I'm looking for. I suspect this a difficult task, as '\' is a legal character in Unix filenames.	[reply]
Re^4: CPAN Module for mixing Unix/Windows path by rovf (Priest) on Jun 05, 2008 at 13:31 UTC
Actually there are many things which will get you in trouble with cross-platform filenames. Another example beside of the backslash would be the colon (illegal in Windows and on the Mac). But when you do cross-platform stuff, you forbid anyway a certain set of characters which might get you in trouble (/\@:[]*, just to name a few), so this would be a "garbage in - garbage out" problem anyway, so this is not something I would worry. -- Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>	[reply]