http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=489538


in reply to Re^3: Perl Best Practices book: is this one a best practice or a dodgy practice?
in thread Perl Best Practices book: is this one a best practice or a dodgy practice?

If you want to be a bit more thorough, you could do something like 
use File::Spec::Functions( rel2abs canonpath );

my $full_inpath = canonpath( rel2abs( $infile ) );
my $full_outpath = canonpath( rel2abs( $outfile ) );

if ( $full_inpath eq $full_outpath ) { ... }

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Yes, there are ways to fool this. Ideally, there would be some is_same_real_file() in File::Spec that would take into account symlinks, case sensitivity, volume names, and the like.
My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

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