From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2008-10-25T14:59:42+09:00
Subject: Re: How to tell if two paths point to the same file?

From: Nobuyoshi Nakada [mailto:nobu@ruby-lang.org] 
# At Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:21:21 +0900,
# Kenneth McDonald wrote in [ruby-talk:318516]:
# >  From the documentation, that seems to compare to different 
# files to  
# > see if they have the same content. Thanks for the 
# suggestion, though.
# 
# It tells whether two files are an identical file, in other
# words, same hardlinks.  The doc is too terse?

i think, Nobu, the method naming is misleading/clashing in File and FileUtils.

there is File.identical? but there is also Fileutils#identical? wc is aliased to compare_file, wc is totally different w File.identical

imho, there are already too many method names in ruby to remember. a lot almost having the same fxnality.

it would be nice if file.identical just returns nil, or 1, or 0, where nil for different, 1 for same, and 0 for same self.


comparison of File/fileutils identical follows..

~$ qri file#identical?
------------------------------------------------------- 
     File.identical?(file_1, file_2)   =>  true or false
--------------------------------------------------------
     Returns true if the named files are identical.

         open("a", "w") {}
         p File.identical?("a", "a")      #=> true
         p File.identical?("a", "./a")    #=> true
         File.link("a", "b")
         p File.identical?("a", "b")      #=> true
         File.symlink("a", "c")
         p File.identical?("a", "c")      #=> true
         open("d", "w") {}
         p File.identical?("a", "d")      #=> false


~$ qri fileutils#identical?
--------------------------------------------------- FileUtils#identical?
     identical?(a, b)
---------------------------------------------------
     Alias for #compare_file

     Alias for #compare_file


~$ qri fileutils#compare_file
------------------------------------------------- FileUtils#compare_file
     compare_file(a, b)
-------------------------------------------------
     Returns true if the contents of a file A and a file B are
     identical.

       FileUtils.compare_file('somefile', 'somefile')  #=> true
       FileUtils.compare_file('/bin/cp', '/bin/mv')    #=> maybe false
     (also known as identical?, cmp)