[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #36677] canonicalize_file_name: inconsistent behavior for non-existing files

[Philip Nienhuis]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?36677>

                 Summary: canonicalize_file_name: inconsistent behavior for
non-existing files
                 Project: GNU Octave
            Submitted by: philipnienhuis
            Submitted on: Mon Jun 18 19:27:39 2012
                Category: None
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Incorrect Result
                  Status: None
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: Philip Nienhuis
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: dev
        Operating System: Any

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Details:

canonicalize_file_name behaves differently under Linux than under Windows
(file 'notfound.fil' doesn't exist):

Windows (both MSVC & MinGW) Octave-3.6.2_MSVC

octave-3.6.2.exe:1> filename = 'notfound.fil'
filename = notfound.fil
octave-3.6.2.exe:2> canonicalize_file_name (filename)
ans = c:\home\philip\mydocs\octave\notfound.fil
octave-3.6.2.exe:3> filename = '..\notfound.fil'
filename = ..\notfound.fil
octave-3.6.2.exe:4> canonicalize_file_name (filename)
ans = c:\home\philip\mydocs\notfound.fil
octave-3.6.2.exe:5> pwd
ans = c:\home\philip\mydocs\octave


Linux: (Octave-3.6.1 (Mandriva)  &  tip d.d. June 17, 2012)

octave-3.6.1:1> filename = 'notfound.fil'
filename = notfound.fil
octave-3.6.1:2> ls filename
ls: cannot access filename: No such file or directory
error: ls: command exited abnormally with status 2
octave-3.6.1:2> canonicalize_file_name (filename)
ans = 
octave-3.6.1:3> filename = './notfound.fil'
filename = ./notfound.fil
octave-3.6.1:4> canonicalize_file_name (filename)
ans = 
octave-3.6.1:5> 


Another example (on Linux:)

octave-3.6.1:1> filename = '/tmp/notfound.fil'
filename = /tmp/notfound.fil
octave-3.6.1:2> canonicalize_file_name (filename)
ans = 
octave-3.6.1:3> 


Some more background:

I wouldn't be able to tell for sure on which of the two platforms
canonicalize_file_name behaves faulty (plus, I can't test on Mac OSX). 
But the behavior is inconsistent across platforms.

As for me, I would prefer that on Linux, like on Windows,
canonicalize_file_name assumes that a non-existing file would reside in the
current directory.

This is a.o., needed in the UNO (OpenOffice.org) sections of the io package,
where to be able to open or create a file, OOo needs the fully qualified file
name.
On Windows the same seems to be needed for COM/ActiveX.

A clumsy workaround would be to first test for existence, and if nonexistent,
prepend the filename with 
['pwd' filesep]
but this would break for nonexistent files with fully qualified pathnames in
another directory, as the third example shows.
Obviously, more involved workarounds can be imagined; but IMO that
functionality should rather be contained in the canonicalize_file_name
function.





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