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).