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References: <4ECF6970-2A01-4C47-9B41-87D534F54CB8@shyim.de> <CAMjSS5Nsq6uo=yagS+XmstqU3a4Tah-_Bc6G1KwZbzMuO8z3hw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAMjSS5Nsq6uo=yagS+XmstqU3a4Tah-_Bc6G1KwZbzMuO8z3hw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 17 May 2023 11:31:05 -0400
Message-ID: <CAPKYkKyvyGP7ybPbzuc4M=PyawBR5QxQ_YiNObWO7stn1ehbyg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Timo Tijhof <ttijhof@wikimedia.org>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0000000000000244f305fbe56197"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] path_join function
From: chasepeeler@gmail.com (Chase Peeler)

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On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 11:13=E2=80=AFAM Timo Tijhof <ttijhof@wikimedia.org=
> wrote:

> In case it is of interest, the implementation we use on Wikipedia
> as part of MediaWiki, is available on Packagist:
>
> https://packagist.org/packages/wikimedia/relpath
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/RelPath
>
> --
> Timo Tijhof,
> Wikimedia Foundation.
> https://timotijhof.net/
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 3:54=E2=80=AFPM <php@shyim.de> wrote:
>
> > Hey,
> >
> > I have created on GitHub a feature request for a path_join function (
> > https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/11258) and got the label that thi=
s
> > requires a RFC. So I am here now :)
> >
> > The idea is to provide in PHP itself a function to join filesystem path=
s
> > (idea: path_join) like in other languages, node as example (
> > https://nodejs.org/api/path.html#pathjoinpaths). For me this function i=
s
> > some kind of base filesystem functionality like basename, realpath.
> >
> > Example usage:
> >
> > path_join('/base', 'my', 'path'); // /base/my/path
> > path_join('/base', 'my', 'path', 'test', '..'); // /base/my/path
> >
> > Why not just string concatenation?
> >
> > When you concat just the paths you have to think about:
> > - normalize string part to strip ending slash
> > - for windows compatibility you have to use DIRECTORY_SEPERATOR
> >
> > I think this can improve the developer experience when working with
> > filesystems a lot and people can delete their implementation.
> >
> > I am really looking for your feedback, right now I have no =E2=80=9Ckar=
ma points=E2=80=9D
> > to create a RFC in the wiki :)
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Soner
>

Definitely a useful feature, but not sure it needs to be a core function.
It's very easy to implement in userland. Userland implementation also
allows people to better customize it to their needs. Never going to be
using it on windows? Just use /. Only going to be using it on windows? Just
use \. Need to support URLs as well as windows directories, create a method
that allows specifying the separator. Just for the simple case of windows
vs *nix directories, how is it determined which separator to use? If it's
the operating system that the code is running on, then what about if I need
to generate a *nix style path even though I'm running on Windows, or vice
versa? My feeling is that for the function to be easy to use, you have to
cut out too many scenarios which causes users to have to fallback to their
own implementations anyway. Finally, there aren't going to be any
meaningful performance gains which would possibly justify not implementing
it in userland.


--=20
Chase Peeler
chasepeeler@gmail.com

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