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Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2017 10:13:27 -0700
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To: Sara Golemon <pollita@php.net>
Cc: Rasmus Schultz <rasmus@mindplay.dk>, PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Directory separators on Windows
From: walterp@gmail.com (Walter Parker)

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On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 8:21 AM, Sara Golemon <pollita@php.net> wrote:

> My first thought is UNC paths.  On windows a file server share is
> denoted by \\host\share . if you combine that with relative paths
> produced from PHP, you end up in the dubious situation of
> "\\host\share/path/to/file" <--- wat?
>
> Overall, it smells of magic.
>
> -Sara
>
> On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 8:25 AM, Rasmus Schultz <rasmus@mindplay.dk>
> wrote:
> > Today, I ran into a very hard-to-debug problem, in which paths (to SQL
> > files, in a database migration script) were kept in a map, persisted to a
> > JSON file, and this file was moved from a Windows to a Linux file-system
> -
> > because the paths on the Linux system had forward slashes, the files
> > appeared to be missing from the map.
> >
> > Related questions are very commonly asked by Windows users, indicating
> that
> > this is a common problem:
> >
> > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14743548/php-on-
> windows-path-comes-up-with-backward-slash
> > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5642785/php-a-good-
> way-to-universalize-paths-across-oss-slash-directions
> > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6510468/is-there-a-
> way-to-force-php-on-windows-to-provide-paths-with-forward-slashes
> >
> > The answers that are usually given (use DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, use
> > str_replace() etc.) is that by default you automatically get
> cross-platform
> > inconsistencies, and the workarounds end up complicating code everywhere,
> > and sometimes lead to other (sometimes worse) portability problems.
> >
> > The problem is worsened by functions like glob() and the SPL
> directory/file
> > traversal objects also producing inconsistent results.
> >
> > Returning backslashes on Windows seems rather unnecessary in the first
> > place, since forward slashes work just fine?
> >
> > Might I suggest changing this behavior, such that file-system paths are
> > consistently returned with a forward slash?
> >
> > Though this is more likely to fix rather than create issues, this could
> be
> > a breaking change in some cases, so there should probably be an INI
> setting
> > that enables the old behavior.
> >
> > Thoughts?
>
> --
> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
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>
>

UNC pathing also works with forward slashes. For example, in powershell the
following is valid and works if your host is named UNC1 and you have admin
rights to the server.

//UNC1/C$/


-- 
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of
zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.   -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

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