[boost] Re: [filesystem] Generic path grammar corner cases

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-06-02 09:37:14

"David Daeschler" <daveregs_at_[hidden]> wrote in message 
news:d7n1to$rr7$1_at_sea.gmane.org...
> Since the slash or slashes in that case are extraneous, I would also say 
> option 2 is the way to go.  Remove the trailing slash because it was 
> probably not intended in the first place.

I don't believe removing a trailing slash is a good idea because that isn't 
how POSIX or Windows treats a trailing slash, and  also because some apps 
may depend on it to distinguish between a directory path and a file path.

>
> The only question I would have is about the path that is simply "//" or 
> natively in the windows world "\\".  In the windows command prompt 
> changing to those two directories yields the following results.
>
> C:\Documents and Settings\blah>cd \\
> '\\'
> CMD does not support UNC paths as current directories.
>
> and
>
> C:\Documents and Settings\blah>cd \
>
> C:\>
>
> So if you were to trim the trailing slash in "//", it could potentially 
> have different results in windows since it sees the "\\" as the beginning 
> of a UNC path.

Leading double slashes have special meaning in both POSIX and Windows. 
Oddly, POSIX treats three or more leading slashes as a single slash. Three 
or more is just plain illegal in Windows. I didn't mention that in the 
original message to keep it simple, but those cases will have to be handled 
specially.

--Beman