Tell me more ×
Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 4 down vote favorite

I want to ask the user of my bash script to pass a directory path as argument. Which one of the following is a good programming practice - to require that the user enter a trailing / (forward slash) or to require that a user doesn't enter a trailing / (forward slash)?

share|improve this question

4 Answers

up vote 20 down vote accepted

Best practice is to assume neither.

If you have access to path builder utilities/classes use those, if not write your code to accept either format and act accordingly.

Nothing's more annoying for the user than having to remember whether to add a trailing slash or not.

share|improve this answer
4  
Corollary: Always parse paths with the suitable command-line tools - dirname, basename and readlink. A very common problem is using ${path##*/} as a replacement for basename, but if the path ends with a slash that returns an empty string instead of the last path element. – l0b0 Jun 17 '11 at 11:18
+1 for using utility classes. I can't say how many times I've seen developers re-invent the wheel when it comes to assembling paths, when most frameworks can do it easily nowadays. – RationalGeek Jun 17 '11 at 12:16
Also, I'm greatly annoyed when some application requires me to do this in a specific way. And sometimes the user can't control how to write that path: Sometimes they write it, so then yes, they choose to write with or without trailing slash, but in cases where the user autocompletes using TAB, many shells put the trailing slash, so you would require the user to delete it? And even more annoying is when an application behaves differently if you put the trailing slash in a directory passed as an argument (rsync I'm looking at you) – Carlos Campderrós Jun 17 '11 at 14:16
up vote 8 down vote

Since bash ignores multiple slashes, you can safely assume that the user didn't enter a trailing slash in the path and add a slash yourself.

cat /etc/hosts

is the same like

cat /////etc//////////hosts

So your script could look like that:

echo -n "enter path: "
read path
if [ -f $path/myfile ]
then
  echo "found myfile!"
else
  echo "nope"
fi

and you don't have to worry whether or not the user enters a trailing / in the path.

share|improve this answer
4  
Nit: That's not bash behavior, the kernel does it. – Blrfl Jun 17 '11 at 13:15
Blrfl: Thanks for the info! – user281377 Jun 17 '11 at 13:23
up vote 4 down vote

The late Jon Postel had some great advice in section 3.2 of RFC 760 that applies here:

In general, an implementation should be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior. That is, it should be careful to send well-formed datagrams, but should accept any datagram that it can interpret (e.g., not object to technical errors where the meaning is still clear).

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Conceptually, the slash is not part of the name. The slash is only a delimiter between names. My home-dir is /home/stefan and not /home/stefan/.

If you don't expect a trailing slash, you will not fail if there is one, as ammoQ already noted. But you can easily glue together names and vars, because you don't have to quote the slash:

a="/home"
b="stefan"

dir=$a/$b
share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.