[Issue 9530] std.path should have a function for getting the canonical path to a file or directory

[via Digitalmars-d-bugs]

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9530

--- Comment #4 from Vladimir Panteleev <dlang-bugzilla at thecybershadow.net> ---
(In reply to Jonathan M Davis from comment #3)
> (In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #2)
> > Fmainly because I think historically libc did not provide an easy
> > way to canonicalize a path without resolving symlinks.
> 
> Resolving the symlinks is kind of the point here, because the idea is to
> have a function that gives you a single path to a file when given different
> paths to it so that you can know that they're the same file. And if you
> don't resolve symlinks, you definitely can't do that.

I think this is a vain quest, due to things such as hard links, binds, multiple
mounts, subvolumes, network filesystems, various filesystem-specific
shenanigans, and platform differences such as those on Windows. By itself, that
requirement is meaningless without a context, and I suspect that in many cases,
depending on the context, a better way to solve the problem exists.

> I really have no idea how Windows symlinks work. So, I have no idea how
> possible this sort of thing is with Windows symlinks, but the idea it least
> is to be able to take a path name and get a single, canonical path for it so
> that you can compare paths and have them be the same for the same file
> regardless of how that file was originally referred to. Windows may or may
> not make that possible.

I think the same general issues with this idea apply to Windows. For instance,
a volume can be mounted on a drive letter or inside a directory, and none is
"more important" or "more canonical" than the other.

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