[Python-Dev] Path object design

[Fredrik Lundh]

Andrew Dalke wrote:

>> as I said, today's urljoin doesn't guarantee that the output is
>> the *shortest* possible way to represent the resulting URI.
> 
> I didn't think anyone was making that claim.  The module claims
> RFC 1808 compliance.  From the docstring:
> 
>     DESCRIPTION
>         See RFC 1808: "Relative Uniform Resource Locators", by R. Fielding,
>         UC Irvine, June 1995.
> 
> Now quoting from RFC 1808:
> 
>    5.2.  Abnormal Examples
> 
>    Although the following abnormal examples are unlikely to occur in
>    normal practice, all URL parsers should be capable of resolving them
>    consistently.

> My claim is that "consistent" implies "in the spirit of the rest of the RFC"
> and "to a human trying to make sense of the results" and not only
> mean "does the same thing each time."  Else
> 
>>>> urljoin("http://blah.com/", "../../..")
> 'http://blah.com/there/were/too/many/dot-dot/path/elements/in/the/relative/url'
> 
> would be equally consistent.

perhaps, but such an urljoin wouldn't pass the

     minimize(base + relative) == minimize(urljoin(base, relative))

test that today's urljoin passes (where "minimize" is defined as "create 
the shortest possible URI that identifies the same target, according to 
the relevant RFC").

isn't the real issue in this subthread whether urljoin should be 
expected to pass the

     minimize(base + relative) == urljoin(base, relative)

test?

</F>