it is not inconsistent, last option is incorrect and should not be used. what you do there is to declare: directory ‘tmp', file ‘a/b/c.txt’ is casual that it coincides with a real path, but it is not semantically correct, that’s why x ~= z
there was an issue around to explicitly forbid to declare a file like that, but I was (and still am) not sure it should be forbidden… is not the spirit of smalltalk… you know, great power/great responsibility thing :) but it causes confusions (as this one), so at least needs to be correctly explained somewhere :) cheers, Esteban > On 09 Jul 2016, at 13:11, Peter Uhnák <[email protected]> wrote: > > Imagine that you have > > '/tmp/a/b' folder containing 'c' file > > '/tmp/a/b' asFileReference ensureCreateDirectory. > '/tmp/a/b/c' asFileReference writeStreamDo: [ :s | s nextPutAll: 'contents' ]. > > now there are three ways how you can see the contents of the c file > > x := '/tmp/a/b/c.txt' asFileReference. > y := '/tmp' asFileReference / 'a' / 'b' / 'c.txt'. > z := '/tmp' asFileReference / 'a/b/c.txt'. > > They clearly all point to the same file: > > x contents = y contents "true" > x contents = z contents "true" > > Yet the last option is different > > x = y "true" > x = z "false" > > Why is that? Because the parent is different: > > x parent pathString "'/tmp/a/b'" > y parent pathString "'/tmp/a/b'" > z parent pathString "'/tmp'" > > So the parent is based on how the reference was constructed, not what it is > actually pointing to, which is stupid. > > Is this a bug? Is this a (nasty) expected behavior? > > Peter
