Question

Given a path like /a/./b/c/../d, I would like to remove all the “current directory” indicators (i.e., period) and “parent directory” indicators (i.e., ..), giving a/b/d.

I could use File.getCanonicalPath(), but that also resolves symlinks, which I don’t want.

Any simple way? That is, simpler than writing a tokenizer and handling it all myself.

Bonus points if you can tell me what the right name for ‘.’ and ‘..’ are in this context.

Answer 1

You can use FilenameUtils.normalize() in the Apache Commons IO library – see javadoc here.

“Dot” (.) is the current directory and “dot dot” (..) is the parent directory – read up on unix directories.