From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-08-15T16:14:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Does an Array#apply make any sense at all?

2007/8/15, nikolai.weibull@gmail.com <nikolai.weibull@gmail.com>:
> On Aug 14, 8:32 pm, Eric Hodel <drbr...@segment7.net> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 14, 2007, at 04:40, nikolai.weib...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > On Aug 14, 11:50 am, Eric Hodel <drbr...@segment7.net> wrote:
>
> > > > Is there something wrong with Pathname#==?
>
> > > Yes, not that it can't be fixed, but the current definition is sort of
> > > broken (on all systems):
>
> > Could you file a bug on the Ruby tracker?  (Or has it been fixed?)
>
> Well, the documentation is pretty clear about what it does.  Even
> though I'd considered it bugged.  Perhaps the semantics of Pathname#==
> should be clarified before we post any change suggestions.
>
> So, should Pathname#== respect the platforms case insensitivity, for
> example, on Windows and on Mac OS?
>
> Should Pathname#== try hard to make sure that both arguments are as
> complete and clean as possible, for example, by calling
> Pathname#expand_path on both arguments?  This would have to take into
> account that Pathname#== currently has taken any argument that
> responds to #to_s.

I dislike this kind of automation behind the scenes because there may
be situations where you do not want this behavior.  Also keep in mind
that ultimately a safe comparison needs to access the file system
which has a significant performance impact.

I'd prefer either a method like #normalize which does all the
necessary transformations which enable == to compare for identical
file system paths or add a method that does the comparison explicitly.
Maybe #realpath can be adjusted to deliver this.

Just my 0.02EUR...

Kind regards

robert