[Python-Dev] Re: os.path.commonprefix breakage

[Skip Montanaro]

    Greg> To avoid duplication of effort, how about a single function that
    Greg> does both:

    >>> files = ["/home/swen", "/home/swanson", "/home/jules"]
    >>> os.path.factorize(files)
    ("/home", ["swen", "swanson", "jules"])

Since we already have os.path.commonprefix and it's not going away, it
seemed to me that just adding a complementary function to return the
suffixes made sense.  Also, there's nothing in the name factorize that
suggests that it would split the paths at the common prefix.

It could easily be written in terms of the two:

    def factorize(files):
	pfx = os.path.commonprefix(files)
	suffixes = os.path.suffixes(pfx, files)
	return (pfx, suffixes)

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