os.listdir() bug in WinXp. Calling with empty string

[Bengt Richter]

On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 07:29:34 -0400, "John Roth" <newsgroups at jhrothjr.com> wrote:

>
>"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote in message
>news:NK-dnYuNtPlipuKiU-KYuA at comcast.com...
>>
>> "Hannu Kankaanp??" <hanzspam at yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
>> news:840592e1.0310040736.83c9bc3 at posting.google.com...
>> > This may be a bug or simply a strange result of undefined
>> > behaviour, but this is what I get with Python 2.3.2 on
>> > Windows XP:
>> >
>> > >>> import os
>> > >>> os.listdir('')
>> > [ filenames in the current directory, e.g. c:\python\ ]
>> > >>> os.listdir(u'')
>> > [ filenames in the drive's root directory, e.g. c:\ ]
>>
>> On Win98, *both* calls list root directory.  listdir(path) must pass
>> path to os system call and print response or raise exception as
>> determined by os response.
>>
>> >Maybe os.listdir() behaviour is undefined for empty strings,
>>
>> It seems to be defined as whatever the os does with empty strings,
>> which is not much more useful.  You could open SF bug report listing
>> various XP, W98, Linux behaviors and suggest that listdir def be
>> changed to 'if path: current behaviour; else: raise exception'.
>
>I'd like to argue *against* raising an exception. We had a long
>discussion on this exact point on the XP list a while ago, with
>Ron Jeffries holding out for the position that if you can define
>a useful behavior for a corner case, then you should do so
>rather than raising an exception. The least surprising behavior
>here is to simply list the current directory. In other words,
>a null string would be equivalent to a string containing a single
>dot.
>
+1

That intuitively matches well with arg-less invocation of ls or dir.

Regards,
Bengt Richter