Have VfsPath::join() treat paths more unix-like

[Property404]

Example, these are invalid:
path.root().join("..") - this should just return the root
path.join("/") - This should also return the root (this is how Path::join works)
path.join("a///b") - This should be the same as path.join("a/b") (this is also how Path::join works)

Do you think it's a good idea to change the behavior of VfsPath::join()? It would certainly be more convenient for what I'm working on.

I implemented the first suggestion in #41

Let me know and I can submit more PRs

[manuel-woelker]

Hi, thanks for the suggestions!

• I commented on VfsPath::join(): treat '..' at root as valid #41 regarding path.root().join("..").
• path.join("/") etc - having absolute paths be based on the root should be fine I think, looking forward to a PR!
• path.join("a///b") - this one is a bit tricky, my gut instinct would be consider this as folders whose names happen to be the empty string. But this is not how OSes seem to treat this. I haven't found any hints as to why path separators are collapsed this way (other than preventing empty strings as filenames). I realize that this deviation from the unix standard might cause confusion, but OTOH I am still trying to figure out scenarios in which this handling of multiple slashes would be beneficial.

[Property404]

In general, I think the big advantage of Unix collapsing slashes is that if you're concatenating two strings representing paths, you don't have to remember if the first one ended with a slash or not. Eg:

const DIRECTORY: &str = "usr/etc/wobbles/"; // or "usr/etc/wobble"
...
// Did DIRECTORY have a slash??
path.join(DIRECTORY+"/wobble.file")

I rely on this behavior a lot in other situations. Granted, in this particular example, you could do path.join(DIRECTORY);path.join("wobble.file"). But this could come up at higher levels of abstraction, like a shell, which is the primary reason for me wanting these changes

FWIW, both Unix and DOS paths treat consecutive slashes this way

[manuel-woelker]

Good points, align VFS behaviour with what OSes are doing sounds like the right thing to do. 👍

Feel free to add PRs regarding these points.