Why normalize drive letter to lower case？

[fouber]

from v0.11.x，path.normalize will normalize drive letter to lower case：
https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/v0.11.0-release/lib/path.js#L179-L182

why？

[hefangshi]

When you use __dirname to get path, you will get a upper case drive letter, so i don't think the lower case behavior is necessary.

[JacksonTian]

Maybe, because the module cache issue under Windows.

[indutny]

As far as I remember, because of the cache, as @JacksonTian said.

[fouber]

@JacksonTian

what's the "module cache issue"? could u give some more information?

[Mithgol]

@fouber If you require() one module twice, you get two references to the same module (the reference is taken from Node.js module cache) instead of producing a clone (i.e. exact and separate copy) of the module.

It works where the paths to the two modules are equal, though there are problems with that on Windows.

When paths are somehow not equal (see #6829 for example), you get a clone. It means that you loose some time when the module is parsed by the engine once again, and then a change in internal state of one of these modules does not affect the other, which is inconvenient.

[fouber]

@Mithgol

thx very much！

[hefangshi]

the module cache issue seems handled with #6774 , it handled the full filename not driver letter. so there is no need to use a lower case drive letter, and I still don't get why use the lower case driver letter which conflict with __dirname

the driver letter change come from a05f973

[jonschlinkert]

there is no need to use a lower case drive letter

This broke every unit test I have that compares a file path from an API method with, say, __dirname + '/fixtures/foo is now broken. Additionally, since using __dirname will still return an uppercase drive letter, both paths (fixture and actual) need case-normalization for the tests to pass.

Please consider reopening this as a bug.