gh-91317: Document that Path does not collapse initial `//` (GH-32193)

Documentation for `pathlib` says:

> Spurious slashes and single dots are collapsed, but double dots ('..') are not, since this would change the meaning of a path in the face of symbolic links:

However, it omits that initial double slashes also aren't collapsed.

Later, in documentation of `PurePath.drive`, `PurePath.root`, and `PurePath.name` it mentions UNC but:

- this abbreviation says nothing to a person who is unaware about existence of UNC (Wikipedia doesn't help either by [giving a disambiguation page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNC))
- it shows up only if a person needs to use a specific property or decides to fully learn what the module provides.

For context, see the BPO entry.
(cherry picked from commit 78f1a43694)

Co-authored-by: Oleg Iarygin <oleg@arhadthedev.net>
This commit is contained in:
Miss Islington (bot) 2022-06-10 16:07:19 -07:00 committed by GitHub
parent f9d0240db8
commit 3a202de3bb
No known key found for this signature in database
GPG Key ID: 4AEE18F83AFDEB23
2 changed files with 32 additions and 3 deletions

View File

@ -133,11 +133,13 @@ we also call *flavours*:
PureWindowsPath('c:/Program Files')
Spurious slashes and single dots are collapsed, but double dots (``'..'``)
are not, since this would change the meaning of a path in the face of
symbolic links::
and leading double slashes (``'//'``) are not, since this would change the
meaning of a path for various reasons (e.g. symbolic links, UNC paths)::
>>> PurePath('foo//bar')
PurePosixPath('foo/bar')
>>> PurePath('//foo/bar')
PurePosixPath('//foo/bar')
>>> PurePath('foo/./bar')
PurePosixPath('foo/bar')
>>> PurePath('foo/../bar')
@ -166,13 +168,17 @@ we also call *flavours*:
.. class:: PureWindowsPath(*pathsegments)
A subclass of :class:`PurePath`, this path flavour represents Windows
filesystem paths::
filesystem paths, including `UNC paths`_::
>>> PureWindowsPath('c:/Program Files/')
PureWindowsPath('c:/Program Files')
>>> PureWindowsPath('//server/share/file')
PureWindowsPath('//server/share/file')
*pathsegments* is specified similarly to :class:`PurePath`.
.. _unc paths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(computing)#UNC
Regardless of the system you're running on, you can instantiate all of
these classes, since they don't provide any operation that does system calls.
@ -309,6 +315,27 @@ Pure paths provide the following methods and properties:
>>> PureWindowsPath('//host/share').root
'\\'
If the path starts with more than two successive slashes,
:class:`~pathlib.PurePosixPath` collapses them::
>>> PurePosixPath('//etc').root
'//'
>>> PurePosixPath('///etc').root
'/'
>>> PurePosixPath('////etc').root
'/'
.. note::
This behavior conforms to *The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6*,
paragraph `4.11 *Pathname Resolution* <xbd_path_resolution>`_:
*"A pathname that begins with two successive slashes may be interpreted in
an implementation-defined manner, although more than two leading slashes
shall be treated as a single slash."*
.. xbd_path_resolution: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap04.html#tag_04_11
.. data:: PurePath.anchor
The concatenation of the drive and root::

View File

@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
Document that :class:`pathlib.PurePath` does not collapse
initial double slashes because they denote UNC paths.