From: "Beman Dawes" <bdawes@acm.org>
Question: what should path("foo//bar//").string() yield?
1) "foo//bar//" 2) "foo/bar/" 3) "foo/bar/."
(1) follows the rule that the path string is always exactly as input. Desirable in that if a platform actually implements something a bit different from the POSIX specs for multiple slashes, implementations will behave as expected for the platform. Downside is much more complex implementation (because many more functions have to be able to cope with multiple slashes) and more complex testing.
(2) Desirable in that if a platform actually implements something a bit different from the POSIX (and Windows) specs for multiple slashes, implementations will behave portably and correctly in a POSIX (and Windows) sense.
(3) Desirable in that for all three options directory iteration will return three elements - "foo", "bar", "." - so it is a bit counter intuitive for the "." not to appear in the string() results. Not a strong argument.
I'm leaning toward (2). Any comments?
I think the correct answer is (1). The reason is that is what the client gave you. Why modify it? It may be surprising to get something different back. It is reasonable to provide a normalization function that can make any desired tweak to a path, thus externalizing and making explicit the normalization. This also enables creating several normalization functions rather than hard coding one in path. OTOH, (path("foo/") / "/bar").string() should yield "foo/bar" since this is a case of the user asking path to do the concatenation. -- Rob Stewart stewart@sig.com Software Engineer http://www.sig.com Susquehanna International Group, LLP using std::disclaimer;