#20875 [Com]: function to fix path names

ID: 20875 Comment by: lonely dot 16 at hotmail dot com Reported By: briantmeyer at earthlink dot com Status: Open Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Operating System: win2000 PHP Version: 4.3.0RC2 New Comment: Hey. Hello. I`m glad that I found this site. greetings. Help me! Could you help me find sites on the: Fox woods casino entertainment. I found only this - <a href="http://www.justiceplanbook.com/Members/CasinoEntertainment/reno-casino-entertainment">reno casino entertainment</a>. With his casino in different everything and party, trump has located in tumbling the trump bingo on a whole gaming of ones, casino entertainment. Arthur else has been using a viable fun casino company for over 15 goods, and has much designed playing compared in larger desires, casino entertainment. With respect :confused:, Acantha from Tonga. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-12-07 04:26:31] briantmeyer at earthlink dot com It would be nice to have a generic function to clean up paths so they will work on all platforms. Similar in scope to addslashes but focusing on the issues of paths and cross platform compatibility of scripts. Researhing this i only found http://bugs.php.net/ bug.php?id=10916 was related but that was from a long time ago. There also seems like there are equivalents in other languages (VMS, PERL) I know there is already much code for this out there, because everyone that writes cross platform has to have a solution, and that all of it is fairly simple to create as needed if you pay attention to it revolving mainly around "/" changing into "\" and vice versa. However, being relatively new to php, it seems that this type of code is overly prevalent and would be the perfect use for a function, where you pass it the wrong unix/ windows path and it returns the path for the platform you are installed on, or even semi-intelligently figure out what you really meant. It should be added to the core distribution, due to it's purpose to allow greater collaboration between coders across different installations, and the extent of use in a single application would not warrant using a function in most cases. Isn't it difficult to adequately debug for developers that are only on a single platform without such a tool? They'll have no idea until they test it. Code related to this issue is in all the opensource projects, but only in one or two places per project and was probably only added upon someone trying to use on the wrong platform. It also seems like this could allow the php language to elegantly handle variations with other separators such as the older mac ":". For instance, XP changed the hard drive letter from the traditional c:\ to d:\ or whatever the last drive is. I am sure that requires some script tweaking. As changes occur, they can happen globally across the entire php community allowing older scripts that use this to keep on working. This would make code generally more cross platform without the necessary "if platform, then this path" that needs to be tested and debugged on both platforms. It is, as i am thinking of it, a very simple thing needed more for compatibility between installs than anything else, It seems like this is the only real area of code difference between unix and windows machines and working solely with the windows platform, i already know my scripts will break on the other platforms with my use of "\\". Adoption of a function as such would allow me to develop on windows, and deploy (or share) on unix without as many issues(or vice versa). It also would allow me to use "/" as instead of "\\ " in my paths which seem to look more "right" to me and would make my scripts the same as the unix/mac/linux developer. (It gets hard to keep track of which are escapes and which are slashes sometimes). It also might allow the distribution php.ini files to use cross platform paths that work asis on both platforms if all paths are run through this function as they are read from this file. Having a prepend option that would allow easy access to get the path of folders that change from machine to machine without extra coding. This has always been a great feature of applescript and should find it's way into php. The web root folder, include folders, OS directory, php directory, or paths set in php.ini. Perhaps even allow developers to add paths to php.ini that configure their products. fixpath($path, [prepend], [append], [unix/pc/html override]) fixpath($path, "c:/", "", "PC") // as opposed to "c:\\" makes easier to read fixpath($path, "INCLUDEFOLDER", "", "PC") // use of keyword and returns windows path Basically it would a. determine platform b. convert path "/" to "\" or "\" to "/" b ased on platform, if wrong c. perhaps add a c:\ or other path information to the beginning as needed c. re move any "//" due to $ rootdir = "/bin/"; $thisdir = $rootdir."/somedir/ "; // or other platform restrictions (yes i know, dumb mistake but still nice to elegantly fix) d. test to se e if file exists, perhaps looking through include fol ders e. have a prepend/append string f. override path wi th platform g. ex p and strings like .. to enclosing folder path h. fix invali d characters on platform --- (target file after file upload) i. have keywords that convert to local system paths ww root/currentpath/domain root (http://www.url.com/)/or p hp.ini settings added by user. j. resolve an Alias/S hortcut. and would return a valid absolute path to a fi le This seems like a very easy and fast thing to code fo r the most part, even for me with m y current limited kno w ledge of php. I also w o uld make the languge better, easier, and more elegant. How would something like this get into the core dis t ribution? What would keyword s be, what needs to be access ed? Is there already an accepted Syntax that should be used for keywords this function accesses. Are there other path related platform issues? Are there folder paths that are hard to access? Is the code for the functions in the core distribution written in php or in a higher level language? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=20875&edit=1