What's a "canonical path"?

107

The whole point of making anything "canonical" is so that you can compare two things. For example, both ../../here/bar/x and ./test/../../bar/x may refer to the same location, but you can't do a textual comparison on the two paths. However, if you turn them into their canonical representation, they both become ../bar/x, and we see that they actually refer to the same thing.

In short, it is often the case that you have many ways of referring to one thing, and in that case you may be able to define a canonical representation which is unique and which allows you to get a handle on collections of such things.

Source: stackoverflow.com

Similar codes

0 vote287 views1 answer
How to make a plugin wait on enable
Java
7 votes229 views2 answers
Arraylist to string
Java
13 votes230 views1 answer
All string functions in java
Java
2 votes259 views1 answer
Java random primary key
Java
0 vote265 views1 answer
Java suppress warnings rawtypes
Java
23 votes273 views1 answer
Bootstrap messages red
Java
2 votes291 views1 answer
Jackson ignore value if null
Java
0 vote293 views1 answer
Java replace all space with underscore
Java
0 vote280 views2 answers
Search a 2D Matrix II
Java
0 vote289 views1 answer
Could not identify launch activity: Default Activity not found
Java