win32 path.normalize change in behavior

[dougwilson]

• Version: v8.9.4
• Platform: Windows 10 64-bit
• Subsystem: path

So there seems to have been some change in path.normalize for win32 between Node.js 8.4.0 and 8.5.0 that changed how paths are being normalized. There seems to be a behavior difference with some paths that looked like drive-relative paths. Example:

> path.normalize(".\\C:../..")
'.'

Versions 8.4.0 and below used to do this:

> path.normalize(".\\C:../..")
'C:..\\..'

Is this an expected change?

[BridgeAR]

Refs: #14107

Ping @targos

[targos]

I think we can say that it is expected.
The behavior present in versions <8.5.0 and <6.12.0 is the result of a bug that stayed for a long time without being noticed.
All releases of v4.x and v9.x return '.'.

FWIW, in Python, normpath(".\\C:../..") also returns '.'.

@dougwilson what is it breaking?

[dougwilson]

Hi @targos there isn't anything specifically breaking here; there was a change in behavior of an application I have and tracked it down to this, and was not sure why it happened within a minor release, so just wanted to confirm it was intentional. The new behavior is correct vs the old behavior of course.

[BridgeAR]

Closing as the question seems to be answered now.