Trailing slash consistency between __dirname and os.tmpdir()

[hacksparrow]

console.log(os.tmpdir()) // trailing slash
console.log(__dirname) // no trailing slash

Is there a good reason why os.tmpdir() ends with a trailing slash, while __dirname does not? If there is none, it might make sense to make the return values consistent.

[micnic]

it may be that this is a platform specific issue, for me they are both without trailing slash, what operating system are you using?

[cjihrig]

os.tmpdir() comes directly from environment variables. __dirname uses path.dirname(), which strips trailing slashes.

[hacksparrow]

Mac OS.

[tellnes]

Maybe we should make os.tmpdir() strip trailing slashes?

[cjihrig]

It would be nice to be consistent, but it could potentially break existing code.

[tellnes]

Yes it will probably break some existing code, but I still see this as a bug.

[cjihrig]

I would be OK with this for a major version bump, but I'd like to hear what others think.

[hacksparrow]

Right now I am getting through by adding a mandatory '/' everywhere I suspect the slash may or may not be found, and using path.normalize(). But it is an inelegant solution.

Probably iojs should work on normalizing the trailing slash to provide for a consistent interface. It is a pain when something works on Mac and fails on Linux, and vice versa.

[micnic]

I was looking on Github for modules which use os.tmpdir() and most of them use path methods to deal with it, only about 4 modules out of ~50 that I found were using raw string concatenation which can lead to some issues

[tellnes]

This is a quick fix in io.js and a quick fix in those modules if they break. I'll go ahead and create a pull request and then the only thing left is to choose whether to merge or not.

[tellnes]

Landed in next branch as bb97b70