easier conversion pathToURL possible?

[christof hoeke]

hi,
for a program i need filepaths like "\test\index.html" that might come as
input from the command line to be converted to urls like "/test/index.html".
(somehow something contrary to what os.path can do to a path..., not to make
it os specific but generalize it).
also absolute paths like "c:\test\index.html" should be converted to an url
like file:///c:/test/index.html.

i could not find a solution in the standard library, is there one?

the following is the function i wrote for doing this. is there an easier
solution to it and does it work for all platforms at all? i could only test
this on windows.

def pathToURL(path):
    """
    converts a os specific filepath into a standard URL?
    """
    #delete garbage like /./
    path = os.path.normpath(path)
    #use file: protocoll for complete paths with drivenames
    drive, p = os.path.splitdrive(path)
    #change possible \ to /
    url = string.replace(p, "\\", "/")
    if drive:
        return "file:///%s%s" % (drive, url)
    else:
        return url

does this code work on unix and mac at all?
thanks a lot!

chris