Expand description

This crate exports a single trait, Lexiclean, with a single method, lexiclean, implemented on Path, that performs lexical path cleaning.

Lexical path cleaning simplifies paths without looking at the underlying filesystem. This means:

  • Normally, if file is a file and not a directory, the path file/.. will fail to resolve to. Lexiclean resolves this to .

  • Path::canonicalize returns io::Result<PathBuf>, because it must make system calls, that might fail. Lexiclean does not make system calls, and thus cannot fail.

  • The path returned by lexiclean will only contain components present in the input path. This can make the resultant paths more legible for users, since foo/.. will resolve to ., and not /Some/absolute/directory.

  • Lexiclean does not respect symlinks.

    Additional test cases and bug fixes are most welcome!

Traits