Walking The Right Path

[Tim Daneliuk]

Ah yes, moral philosophy and python all come together... Er, that is to day:

Imagine you have this situation on a *nix filesystem:

Symlink A: /foo -/usr/home
Symlink B: /bar -/foo/username
If I do this:

import os
print os.path.realpath("/bar")

I get this (as one would expect):

/usr/home/username

However, what if I want to get back the result in this form:

/foo/username
IOW, is there a way to return a symlink-based path which contains
the symlink pointer as is was *defined* not as it expands?
TIA,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk tu****@tundraware.com
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

[Jakub Stolarski]

Tim Daneliuk napisal(a):

Ah yes, moral philosophy and python all come together... Er, that is to day:

Imagine you have this situation on a *nix filesystem:

Symlink A: /foo -/usr/home
Symlink B: /bar -/foo/username
If I do this:

import os
print os.path.realpath("/bar")

I get this (as one would expect):

/usr/home/username

However, what if I want to get back the result in this form:

/foo/username
IOW, is there a way to return a symlink-based path which contains
the symlink pointer as is was *defined* not as it expands?

One way (but very ugly):
print os.path._resolve_link('/bar')

[Tim Daneliuk]

Jakub Stolarski wrote:

Tim Daneliuk napisal(a):

>Ah yes, moral philosophy and python all come together... Er, that is to day:

Imagine you have this situation on a *nix filesystem:

Symlink A: /foo -/usr/home
Symlink B: /bar -/foo/username
If I do this:

import os
print os.path.realpath("/bar")

I get this (as one would expect):

/usr/home/username

However, what if I want to get back the result in this form:

/foo/username
IOW, is there a way to return a symlink-based path which contains
the symlink pointer as is was *defined* not as it expands?

One way (but very ugly):
print os.path._resolve_link('/bar')

Yup, that does just what I want. By why, pray tell, do you consider it
ugly ...?
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk tu****@tundraware.com
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

[Tim Daneliuk]

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

Jakub Stolarski wrote:

>Tim Daneliuk napisal(a):

>>IOW, is there a way to return a symlink-based path which contains
the symlink pointer as is was *defined* not as it expands?

One way (but very ugly):
print os.path._resolve_link('/bar')

Yup, that does just what I want. By why, pray tell, do you consider it
ugly ...?

Whoops - that doesn't do it either. If I have this:

/foo -/usr/bar
/usr/bar -/usr1/bar

Then realpath or _resolve_link both return "/usr1/bar" when given "/foo"
(when what I want is "/usr/bar"). There is obviously some underlying
OS support to do this (in this case FreeBSD 4.x) because 'ls' shows
things as I prefer them - i.e. Links are shown as assigned not how they
actually resolve...
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk tu****@tundraware.com
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

[Peter Otten]

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

IOW, is there a way to return a symlink-based path which contains
the symlink pointer as is was *defined* not as it expands?

os.readlink()

Peter

[Tim Daneliuk]

Peter Otten wrote:

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

>IOW, is there a way to return a symlink-based path which contains
the symlink pointer as is was *defined* not as it expands?

os.readlink()

Peter

Thanks - I couldn't find it because it was right in front of my nose :)
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk tu****@tundraware.com
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/