Re: Builtins should canonicalize path arguments

[Pádraig Brady]

On 01/09/2014 07:19 PM, Chet Ramey wrote:
> On 1/9/14 12:42 PM, Ondrej Oprala wrote:
>> Hi, I investigated this bug report:
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=987975
>> and found out that some of bash's builtins (source at the very least) do
>> not canonicalize
>> pathnames given as arguments (builtin "open" is instead fed with the path -
>> failing in the BZ case).
>> The builtin "cd" seems to handle relative paths correctly. I think it would
>> be reasonable to take part of
>> cd's canonicalization code and use it in other builtins as well. I'd gladly
>> take care of the patch.
>> Would upstream consider this a good approach?
> 
> I have reservations.  If the user in question wants consistent behavior,
> I suggest he use `set -o physical' for a while and see if it does what
> he wants.  The solution might be that simple.

See also the coreutils realpath command which might be useful in the general 
case:
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/realpath-invocation.html

thanks,
Pádraig.