[Python-Dev] Re: os.path.commonprefix breakage

[Greg Ewing]

Tim Peters:

> The principled solution is to put the new functionality in a new
> function.

I agree with that.

> By my count, Unix and Windows people have each voted for both answers, and
> the Mac contingent is silently laughing <wink>.

The Mac situation is somewhat complicated. Most of the time
a single trailing colon makes no difference, but occasionally
it does. For example, "abc" is a relative pathname, but
"abc:" is an absolute pathname!

The best way to resolve this, I think, is to decree that it
should do the same as what os.path.split does, on all
platforms. That function seems to know how to deal with 
all the tricky cases correctly.

Don't-even-think-of-asking-about-VMS-ly,

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a	  |
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