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barbie (2653)

barbie
  reversethis-{ku. ... m} {ta} {eibrab}
http://barbie.missbarbell.co.uk/

Leader of Birmingham.pm [pm.org] and a CPAN author [cpan.org]. Co-organised YAPC::Europe in 2006 and the 2009 QA Hackathon, responsible for the YAPC Conference Surveys [yapc-surveys.org] and the QA Hackathon [qa-hackathon.org] websites. Also the current caretaker for the CPAN Testers websites and data stores.

If you really want to find out more, buy me a Guinness ;)

Links:
Memoirs of a Roadie [missbarbell.co.uk]
[pm.org]
CPAN Testers Reports [cpantesters.org]
YAPC Conference Surveys [yapc-surveys.org]
QA Hackathon [qa-hackathon.org]

Journal of barbie (2653)

Tuesday October 22, 2002
09:44 AM

more File::Spec woes

[ #8521 ]
I have an HTML form, which includes a file field that is passed to my CGI script. In order to store it in the system I just need the filename from the variable given. Liking the idea of using existing modules to do the work, I thought I'd use splitpath() from File::Spec's repetoire.

Unfortunately it breaks :(

The reason is due to the fact that File::Spec cannot cope with different file specifications when used in a cross platform way. In the scenario above the user is using a browser on a Win32 box, but the code is running on a Unix box, thus the File::Spec::Unix.pm is loaded.

The following code:

my $source = "c:\mydirs\myfile.doc"; # the value from the HTML file form field
my ($volume,$directories,$filename) = splitpath($source);
print "volume=[$volume]\ndirectories=[$directories]\nfilename=[$filename]\n";

results in:

volume=[]
directories=[]
filename=[c:\mydirs\myfile.doc]

So that when I try to save "/var/www/mysite/html/downloads/c:\mydirs\myfile.doc" if fails miserably.

I now use a simple regex to extract everything from the last directory delimiter (if there is one) to the end of the string. I guess it was a bit pointless calling another function to do it, but at least it highlighted the problem.


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  • Can't you specify a platform-specific version? For instance, the following works ok on my linux workstation:
    my @elements = File::Spec::Win32->splitpath( $foo );
    • No because that'll break when a Linux user posts a file from their browser of choice.

      The problem is that File::Spec ridigly describes the path format for one system. If you specify an Win32 system, no other system will work.

      Thanks to muttley [perl.org] I now use the following:

      use File::Basename;
      fileparse_set_fstype("MSWin32"); # just in case it's in Windows style
      my $realname = basename($source);

      And that seems to work a treat.

      • Right, but you can generally get this information from whatever the browser passes as the UserAgent. But that's likely a little too much work just to get a filename without associated directory :-)

        I was just responding to the perceived "I need to parse a filename from another type of filesystem" need.

        • ...get this information from whatever the browser passes as the UserAgent.

          Thats a big assumption of the fact that the client platform information (a) is there and (b) is accurate.

          Admittedly for the majority of our purposes it will be there, but there are those few cases when it could pose a problem. At least with the way muttley suggested we now cover a bigger majority of platforms that will be accessing our systems. If we could cover Macs too, then I think we'd have the lot.

          • Does CGI.pm handle file uploading in a cross-platform way? I'm suggesting, but I've never tried it myself.

            --
            J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
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