Re: File URLs in NSURL

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Thursday, June 26, 2003, at 05:14  pm, Fred Kiefer wrote:

>   absolute = [[NSURL fileURLWithPath: absolute] relativeString];

<snip>

> But this does not give the correct result. According to the 
> specification the URL file name "absolute" should be something like
> file:///home/fred/GNUstep/Images/TextSystem1.png
>
> but in GNUStep I do get:
> file:/home/fred/GNUstep/Images/TextSystem1.png

Yes ... that's because you asked for a 'relative' path ... so you get 
the path component relative to the base location.
ie without the 'host' specification part.  I think this is the correct 
behavior - it conforms to the RFCs and is the same
as on MacOS-X

> When using absoluteString instead of relativeString I get:
> file://localhost/home/fred/GNUstep/Images/TextSystem1.png

There I agree ... IMO the RFCs imply that the hostname part of a file 
scheme URL should be an empty string, which would give 
file:///home/fred/GNUstep/Images/TextSystem1.png.
However, MacOS-X puts 'localhost' in the hostname position, so the 
GNUstep code is written to be compatible with this.

> Again this will result in a different MD5 digest than the one expected 
> by the thumbnail standard, so we wont find the correct file. The 
> question now is, if there is another method to get the required string 
> or if this is a bug in GNUstep, which we should correct.

I suggest using the -absoluteString method and removing the 'localhost'

While I think that the MacOS-X implementation is strange, it's the 
definitive guide for this class (it's not in OpenStep), so I'de be very 
hesitant to 'fix' this and break compatibility.