How to test if two strings point to the same file or directory?

[Tim Chase]

>> Comparing file system paths as strings is very brittle.
> 
> Why do you say that? Are you thinking of something like this?
> 
> /home//user/somedirectory/../file
> /home/user/file

Or even

	~/file

> How complicated do you want to get? If you are thinking about aliases,
> hard links, shortcuts, SMB shares and other complications, I'd be
> surprised if there is a simple way.
> 
> But for the simple case above:
> 
>>>> import os
>>>> path = '/home//user/somedirectory/../file'
>>>> os.path.normpath(path)
> '/home/user/file'

I'd suggest os.path.samefile which should handle case-sensitive 
(non-win32) vs case-insensitive (win32) filenames, soft-links, 
and hard-links.  Not sure it's prescient enough to know if you 
have two remote shares, it will unwind them to their full 
server-path name.  Works here on my various boxes (Linux, MacOS-X 
and OpenBSD) here.  I'd assume it's the same functionality on Win32.

-tkc