From: Overnight <NOSPAM_jazz_x@..._NOSPAM>
Date: 2002-09-24T05:19:14+09:00
Subject: Re: File.lib bug?

> > C:\>irb
> > irb(main):001:0> d=File.join('c:/','windows')
> > "c://windows"
> > irb(main):002:0> File.directory?(d)
> > false
> > irb(main):003:0> File.directory?('c:/windows')
> > true
> > irb(main):004:0> File.expand_path(d)
> > "c:/windows"
> > irb(main):005:0> File.directory?(File.expand_path(d))
> > true
> I'm guessing that the reason why File.directory?(d) == false was
> File.exist?(d) == false.
> File.join is intended to absorb the deference of path separator among
> platforms.  File.join(a,b,c,d) is equivalent to
>   [a,b,c,d].join(File::SEPARATOR)
> So, File.join('c:/', 'windows') should be File.join('c:', 'windows'). 

Hmmmm, imho i'd like to see this fixed... Under Unix, if I'm not wrong, 
something like '/usr//lib' won't hurt, but under Windows it will, as I 
showed in my example (btw, it looks like the presence of double slash in 
the argument to File.directory? makes Ruby/Windows go and look for some 
remote hosts, considering the long delay it takes before it returns 
false...)

Using File.join('c:','windows') will work of course, but under Windows I 
never refer to the root of a disk as C:, D:, etc, always as C:\, D:\. 
This is an habit imposed from the shell, which interprets 'C:' (alone, 
with no slash) as "current working dir of disk C". So 'C:myfile' is the 
same as 'C:\myfile' only if the working dir of C: is '\'... 

Last observation: with 1.6.7, File::SEPARATOR evals to '/', and this 
looks definitely wrong to me (even if Ruby understands both '/' and '\' 
in paths).

It's wonderful to see how easily such things can be fixed in Ruby, but 
I'd like to see them fixed officially: I guess I'm not the only one who 
got bitten by this...

> I'm afraid documentation about 1.7 is written in only Japanese.  That
> is being written on an Wiki system.

I'll have to wait, not ready for a Japanese quick course at the moment :-
)

Thank you for your help,

Andrea