[Python-Dev] Re: os.path.commonprefix breakage
Greg Ewing
greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Fri, 18 Aug 2000 13:01:17 +1200 (NZST)
Thomas Wouters:
> Bzzzt. This is unfortunately not true. Observe:
>
> daemon2:~/python > rmdir perl/
> rmdir: perl/: Is a directory
I'd say that's a bug in rmdir in whatever Unix you're using.
Solaris doesn't have the problem:
s454% cd ~/tmp
s454% mkdir foo
s454% rmdir foo/
s454%
There's always room for a particular program to screw up. However,
the usual principle in Unices is that trailing slashes are optional.
> Note that the trailing slash is added by all tab-completing shells that I
> know.
This is for the convenience of the user, who is probably going to type
another pathname component, and also to indicate that the object found
is a directory. It makes sense in an interactive tool, but not
necessarily in other places.
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a |
Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. |
greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+