canonicalize_filename(3) Converts any filename into its canonical form. Allegro game programming library.

SYNOPSIS

#include <allegro.h>

char *canonicalize_filename(char *dest, const char *filename, int size);

DESCRIPTION

Converts any filename into its canonical form, i.e. the minimal absolute filename describing the same file and fixing incorrect forward/backward slashes for the current platform, storing at most `size' bytes into the `dest' buffer. You can use the same buffer both as input and output because Allegro internally works on a copy of the input before touching `dest'. Example:

   char buf[256];
   ...
   canonicalize_filename(buf, "~/../s22/..\\t3st///hi.c",
                         sizeof(buf));
   /* Running this under Unix would
      return: /home/t3st/hi.c */
   
Note that this function won't work as expected if the path to canonicalize comes from another platform (eg. a "c:\something" path will canonicalize into something really wrong under Unix: "/current/path/c:/something").

RETURN VALUE

Returns a copy of the `dest' parameter.