Well, this is the opposite of what I'm asking for, and does not address the case where paths have been persisted in a file or database and the data gets accessed from different OS.
I understand the reasons given for not changing this behavior in PHP itself, so maybe we could have a standard function that normalizes paths to forward slashes? e.g. basically: /** * Normalize a filesystem path. * * On windows systems, replaces backslashes with forward slashes * and ensures drive-letter in upper-case. * * @param string $path * * @return string normalized path */ function normalize_path( $path ) { $path = str_replace('\\', '/', $path); return $path{1} === ':' ? ucfirst($path) : $path; } At least WordPress, Drupal and probably most major CMS and frameworks have this function or something equivalent. This function is too trivial to ship as a separate package, but at the same time, it's too error-prone and repetitive for every framework/project to implement (and test) for itself... In my opinion, it's common enough that it ought to just be built-in? On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 5:45 PM, Kris Craig <kris.cr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Mar 30, 2017 8:21 AM, "Sara Golemon" <poll...@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 <ras...@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 > > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > > > Another option would be to create a function that converts all slashes in > a given input string to whatever the directory seperator should be on that > platform. This way, devs wouldn't have to deal with bulky aliases like > DIRECTORY_SEPERATOR cluttering up their code. > > For example: > > <?php > > print convert_seperators( '/some\directory/' ); > > ?> > > The above would output "/some/directory" on Linux and "\some\directory" on > Windows. > > --Kris >