Michael G Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> dirname("/perl/") == "/perl"
> dirname("/perl/lib//") == "/perl/lib"
>
>That's what I'd think, anyway. But the tests specificly contradict this
>saying
>
> dirname("/perl/lib//") == "/perl"
>
>and specificly pointing out that 5.003_18 returned /perl/lib which was
>"wrong".
>
>According to the documentation the current behavior is both correct and
>incorrect. The docs say dirname() "returns the directory portion of the
>input file specification". So in that sense its wrong. But it also says
>dirname() "conforms to the behavior of the Unix shell command dirname(1)"
>Here's how the BSD manpage describes how it works:
>
> The dirname utility deletes the filename portion, beginning with the last
> slash `/' character to the end of string (after first stripping trailing
> slashes), and writes the result to the standard output.
>
>Note they refrain from saying that it actually returns the directory name!
>It smells like a euphemism for "this function is weak and broken but we
>retain the broken functionality for backwards compatibility purposes".
>
>So does File::Basename follow the shell over this cliff or does dirname()
>actually return the directory name? Do we slavishly remain compatible with
>dirname(1) or correct its mistakes?
We slavishly remain compatbile with our code base - which expects
dirname to behave like dirname(1).
dirname "means" strip one level off input.
If you want a clean abstraction File::Spec is over there ->
>
>As I can probably count on one hand the number of people who are using
>dirname() to mimic the exact behavior of dirname(1),
Well there are at least 7 of them at my day-job place-of-work.
Typical use is
$path = dirname(dirname($foo));
>as opposed to simply
>expecting it to return the directory, I think we can safely fix this. I
>can also probably count on one hand the number of people who are aware of
>these caveats about dirname(1).
>
>This also closes some discrepencies between dirname() and fileparse().
>Currently...
>
> (fileparse("/bar/"))[1] == "/bar/"
> dirname("/bar/") == "/"
>
> (fileparse("bar/"))[1] == "bar/"
> dirname("bar/") == "."
>
>They should be equivalent.
