Re: Bug in builtin function abspath (again)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 10:49:17 -0400
> Cc: address@hidden
> From: "Paul D. Smith" <address@hidden>
> 
> > The realpath function will resolve both absolute and relative paths
> > and return the absolute pathname corresponding to pathname. All but
> > the last component of pathname must exist when realpath is called.
> 
> It's not immediately clear to me what "all but the last component of
> pathname" means; presumably it means that the directory containing the
> last filename in pathname must exist, but that the filename itself does
> not have to exist.

Yes, that seems to be the meaning.  But on platforms where there's no
realpath, we currently use abspath that doesn't care whether that
directory exists.  Since Joe Random Hacker might not know whether her
Make was built with or without realpath (and the docs don't even tell
that realpath falls back on abspath), we should try to emulate
realpath as close as we can, I think.

I also thought about writing an emulation for realpath by using
readlink.  Unless I'm missing something, that shouldn't be too hard.