I just converted a project that was building file paths 'by hand' with join '/', @blah and similar methodology to use File::Spec so that it would produce nice cross-platform behavior. However, I got bit by the quirk that the Unix version of canonpath does not behaving identically to that for other OS's. Specifically, it does not collapse somedir/../ segments unless they are at the beginning of the file path. So it is not 100% cross-platform (!)

The reason for this behavior is outlined in Re: Cleaning up a path.

I'm sure this is rarely an issue, but in my case I really need to have all the parent shortcut's removed. I'm wondering if there is reason why this functionality can't be provided in some fashion perhaps by explicitly checking for symbolic links in the path? Is it just the case that no one felt the need for this to work the same in Unix and other OS's or is there some technical reason why this is an untenable undertaking?

Just thinking off the top of my head I can think of a number of approaches that might be possible

• Have canonpath remove /../ while actually consulting the file system for symbolic links and updating the path accordingly.
• Have canonpath remove /../ without checking for symbolic links if some setting is set, e.g. $File::Spec::IgnoreSymlinks = 1; or use  File::Spec qw(:config ignoresymlinks);.
• Add a new method that will give you the new behavior, e.g. canonpathdammit. The method would be the same as canonpath for most of the OS-specific modules, but different for File::Spec::Unix.

Is there some reason why at least one of these is a good idea?

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