[Python-Dev] A wart which should have been repaired in 3.0?

[skip at pobox.com]

    Phillip> But it doesn't handle the fact that Windows paths are
    Phillip> case-insensitive, or that Posix paths can have symlinks...  or
    Phillip> that one path might be relative and another absolute...

    Phillip> As soon as you move away from being a string operation, you get
    Phillip> an endless series of gotchas...  none of which are currently
    Phillip> documented.

Well, then we can document (some of?) the gotchas* and work on a better
implementation of commonpathprefix.  I don't do Windows.  You're lucky I got
as far as I did with the Windows side of things. ;-)

Skip

* I would argue that symlinks should be transparent.  By the very nature of
  the operations and the fact that they might be performed on other
  platforms (import posixpath on Windows for instance) there is not much, if
  anything, you can infer about the paths themselves other than their
  structure.