Re: bugs in dirname module

[Paul Eggert]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> writes:

> Actually, I think that calling base_name should strip the trailing
> slashes, similar to POSIX basename().

But if you do that, you violate this basic rule:

>   If you have a valid file name F, then accessing F is the same as
>   chdir(dir_name(F)) followed by accessing base_name(F).  Furthermore
>   if you successfully { chdir(dir_name(F)); rename(base_name(F),"foo"); },
>   you have renamed F to a file named "foo" in the same directory that F was 
> in.
If a/b is a symbolic link to a directory, then a/b/ is not the same as
a/b and should not be treated like it.  Hence base_name shouldn't
strip trailing slashes.