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Pathogen

Pathogen is a path utility library for node.js and browsers. It works similarly to (and borrows some code from) node's own path.

Why

The reason why this package exists is that node path works differently between systems. This is problematic when using paths as identifiers or object keys in your programs. You could use path.win32 / path.posix but that is usually not available in browserified versions of path.

Pathogen also solves a few gripes I always had with node.js path.

But most of all, this is a pointless exercise in futility.

How

Pathogen always normalizes the input paths to be in unix style, and can optionally convert back to windows style, or automatically based on system.

You can always pass a mix of windows and unix paths to any method, they will all be converted to unix paths internally.

Example

const fs = require('fs')
const pathogen = require('pathogen')

const basePath = '/some/folder/'
const relPath = './src/files/file.txt'

const joined = pathogen(basePath, relPath)

fs.readFile(joined, () => {})

API

Base (Unix)

pathogen(path, ...path) // cleans up and joins the paths as an unix path string.

pathogen.cwd(path) // current working directory, unix
pathogen.basename(path) // basename
pathogen.extname(path) // extension
pathogen.dirname(path) // dirname, unix
pathogen.resolve(path, path, [...path]) // resolved path, unix
pathogen.relative(path, path) // path relative to path, unix

Windows

const pathogen = require('pathogen')

pathogen.win(path, ...path) // cleans up and joins the paths as a windows path string.

pathogen.win.cwd(path) // current working directory, windows
pathogen.win.basename(path) // basename
pathogen.win.extname(path) // extension
pathogen.win.dirname(path) // dirname, windows
pathogen.win.resolve(path, path, [...path]) // resolved path, windows
pathogen.win.relative(path, path) // path relative to path, windows

System

const pathogen = require('pathogen')

pathogen.sys(path, ...path) // cleans up and joins the paths as a system path string.

pathogen.sys.cwd(path) // current working directory, system
pathogen.sys.basename(path) // basename
pathogen.sys.extname(path) // extension
pathogen.sys.dirname(path) // dirname, system
pathogen.sys.resolve(path, path, [...path]) // resolved path, system
pathogen.sys.relative(path, path) // path relative to path, system

Differences from path

Path fails to join with empty string:

path.join('', '/a') // /a
pathogen('', '/a') // ./a

Path returns ./ when ./ is passed, forgetting to remove trailing slashes:

path.normalize('./') // ./
pathogen('./') // .

Path can't normalize specifically to posix:

path.posix.normalize('/./..//\\\\\\') // /\\\\\\
pathogen('/./..//\\\\\\') // /