[Bug] {{file_path:absolute}} / {{folder_path:absolute}} on MacOS >>> missing leading `/`

[FelipeRearden]

Hello @Taitava !!!

For a best fit with MacOS, is a good idea to include / in the beginning of the follow variables:

• {{file_path:absolute}}
• {{folder_path:absolute}}

{{file_path:absolute}} = Users/login/vault/folder/MyNote.md;
MacOS file_path:absolute = /Users/login/vault/folder/MyNote.md

{{folder_path:absolute}} = Users/login/vault/folder;
MacOS folder_path:absolute = /Users/login/vault/folder

Everything is OK with {{vault_path}}

{{vault_path}} = /Users/login/vault/
MacOS vault path = /Users/login/vault/

Have a great day!

[Taitava]

Everything is OK with {{vault_path}}

Thanks for this detail, it's very helpful to know! The same vault path is used as a component for {{file_path:absolute}} and {{folder_path:absolute}} too, so now I know that the culprit is not where we get the vault path from.

Probably the bug comes from normalizing a join of the vault path and a file/folder relative path. Normalization a is process that should make sure that a path looks sensible. E.g. If you combine Windows paths *C:\Users\username* and \SomeFolder\SomeFile.md (the latter is a relative path), you will get C:\Users\username\\SomeFolder\SomeFile.md, which has a double backslash \\. Normalization cleans it up: C:\Users\username\SomeFolder\SomeFile.md. But it looks like the normalization likes to eat a leading slash from an absolute path, which makes it incorrectly to a relative path.

I have other stuff that will be released in 0.4.0 (probably today), but I'll try to have this fixed in 0.4.1 which will contain other bug fixes, too.

[Taitava]

I just tested {{file_path:absolute}} on Linux and yeah, the same happens on Linux too, which was expected.

[Taitava]

I've escalated this to Obsidian Forum: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/normalizepath-removes-a-leading/24713

I'm not sure if this is something that Obsidian's devs will consider to be fixed on their side or not (= do they see this as a bug or as a designed feature that works like it should). Whichever is the case, I can make a fix myself in this plugin's code, and time will tell if the fix will be just temporary.

While writing the topic to Obsidian's forum, I also noticed another bug related to this, that affects Windows: all \ characters in paths are replaced with / (exception: {{vault_path}} does not have this issue, because it does not use normalization). This is actually a separate bug, but I think I will use this same issue for that one too, and not open a new issue for this.

And while removing leading /s first seemed only to affect Mac and Linux, it affects Windows too, because network paths are not left alone by this bug: \\network\path becomes network\path.

[Taitava]

Todo: Create a wrapper function named normalizePath2() that first calls normalizePath() and then:

• Re-adds leading //\ chracters that were removed by normalizePath(). This must test first that normalizePath() did remove the slashes, so that they won't be repeated in case Obsidian fixes this problem on their side.
• Converts / slashes to \ slashes, if platform is Windows.