Perl getcwd ending forward slashes

Question

I am doing a Perl script to attach another variable to the end of the current working directory, but I am having problems with using the module.

1. If I run getcwd from D:\, the value returned is

   D:/ (with forward slash)  
   

   If I run getcwd from D:\Temp\, the value returned is

   D:/temp (without forward slash)
   

   This makes the situation quite tricky because if I simply do:

   use Cwd;
   $ProjectName = "Project"; # This is a variable supplied by the user
   $directory = getcwd().$ProjectName."\/";
   print $directory."\n";
   

   I will end up with either

   D:/Project (correct)  
   

   or

   D:/TempProject (instead of D:/Temp/Project)
   

   Is this a feature in Cwd? It does not seem to be in the documentation.

2. I have thought up the following code to solve this issue. It takes 3 lines to do it. Can any of you see a more concise way?

   use Cwd;
   $ProjectName = "Project"; # This is a variable supplied by the user
   
   $directory = getcwd();
   $directory =~ s/(.+?)([^\\\/])$/$1$2\//g;  # Append "/" if not terminating with forward/back slash
   $directory .= $ProjectName."\/";
   
   print $directory."\n";
   

Answer 1

Use File::Spec instead of making your own path manipulation routines.

use Cwd;
use File::Spec;

$ProjectName = "Project";

$cwd = getcwd();
$directory = File::Spec->catdir($cwd, $ProjectName);

print "$directory\n";

Answer 2

The first case is including the trailing slash because "D:" is a volume specifier. It isn't a valid directory name. "D:/" is analogous to the root directory in Unix/Linux.

Quick and dirty solution:

$directory .= '/' unless $directory =~ m|/$|;

For a robust and portable solution, use File::Spec or File::Spec::Functions if you prefer a non-object-oriented interface:

use Cwd;
use File::Spec::Functions qw(catdir);

my $directory = catdir(getcwd(), $ProjectName);

Note that catdir does not include the trailing slash, and that File::Spec builds paths using the directory separator for the host operating system. (e.g. backslashes on Windows).