[Python-Dev] os.path.normcase rationale?

[R. David Murray]

On Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:13:46 +0100, Chris Withers <chris at simplistix.co.uk> wrote:
> On 18/09/2010 23:36, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > course, exists() and isdir() etc. do, and so does realpath(), but the
> > pure parsing functions don't.
> 
> Yes, but:
> 
> H:\>echo foo > TeSt.txt
> ...>>> import os.path
>  >>> os.path.realpath('test.txt')
> 'H:\\test.txt'
>  >>> os.path.normcase('TeSt.txt')
> 'test.txt'
> 
> Both feel unsatisfying to me :-S
> 
> How can I get 'TeSt.txt' from 'test.txt' (which feels like the contract 
> normcase *should* have...)

You can't, and you shouldn't be able to.  "normalization" is something
that happens without reference to existing objects, the whole point
is to put the thing into "standard form" so that you can compare
strings obtained from different sources and know that they will
represent the same object on that filesystem.

> > They can be used without a working
> > filesystem even. (E.g. you can import ntpath on a Unix box and happily
> > parse Windows paths.)
> 
> But what value does that add over just doing a .lower() on the path?

It does what is appropriate for that....oh, yeah.  For that OS, not
"for that filesystem".  (e.g. on Unix normcase does nothing since files
with different cases but the same letters are different files.) 

Being os specific rather than file system type specific is the usability bug.
But to fix it we'll need to introduce a 'filesystems' module enumerating
the different file systems we support, with tools for figuring out
what filesystem your program is talking to.  But normacase still,
wouldn't (shouldn't) do what you want.

--
R. David Murray                                      www.bitdance.com