I think that, like os.path.realpath(), it should not fail if the file does not exist.
Maybe the API could be called os.path.unnormpath(), since it is in a sense the opposite of normpath() (which removes case) ? But I would want to write it so that even on Unix it scans the filesystem, in case the filesystem is case-preserving (like the default fs on OS X). --Guido On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Glenn Linderman <v+pyt...@g.nevcal.com> wrote: > On 9/24/2010 3:10 PM, Greg Ewing wrote: >> >> Paul Moore wrote: >> >>> I dug into this once, and as far as I could tell, it's possible to get >>> the information on Windows, but there's no way on Linux to "ask the >>> filesystem". >> >> Maybe we could use a heuristic such as: >> >> 1) Search the directory for an exact match to the name given, >> return it if found. >> >> 2) Look for a match ignoring case. If one is found, test it to >> see if it refers to the same file as the given path, and if so >> return it. >> >> 3) Otherwise, raise an exception. > > > Hmm. There is no need for the function on a case sensitive file system, > because the name had better be spelled with matching case: that is, if it is > spelled with non-matching case it is an attempt to reference a non-existent > file (or at least a different file). > > So the API could do the "right thing" for case preserving or case ignoring > file systems, but for case sensitive file systems, at most an existence > check would be warranted. > > In other words, the API, should it be created, should be "What is the actual > name of the file that matches this if it exists in the filesystem", so the > first check is to see if it exists in the file system (this may raise an > exception if it doesn't exist), and then if it does, then on those > filesystems for which it might be different, obtain the different name. > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/guido%40python.org > -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
