Should I save a path with or without a trailing slash at the end, what's the convention

Question

I'm always confuse whether I should add a trailing slash at the end of a path, and often mix it up, leading to some file no found. Example with drupal:

$base_theme = '/sites/all/themes/myTheme/';

or

$base_theme = '/sites/all/themes/myTheme';

The image path could extend the base theme:

$base_image = $base_theme.'images/';

or

$base_image = $base_theme.'/images';

Is there any convention? Or I can pick which one I prefer?

I would choose to finish all path with a trailing slash since too many slash is better than no slash.

Answer 1

TL;DR: There's no real convention. Trailing slash would be the more globally easy to recognize format. The important thing is that you're consistent through your design and that you convey your usage clearly.

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There's no real convention; but there are considerations to make.

Advantages in trailing slash:

1. Trailing slash usually indicates a folder path (or a prettified URL) whereas a file extension denotes a direct file link. (Think example.com/home/ VS example.com/style.css).
2. This is usually friendlier for people coming from UNIX and such, as in the terminal a clear convention is to leave a trailing slash for directories.
3. As a programmer - adding a trailing slash will result in less-likely programmer errors; for example: accidentally adding a second slash will look ugly (http://example.com/styles//myfile.css) but will not break the file link. Forgetting a slash will: http://example.com/stylesmyfile.css, however the behavior might be confusing for query strings: http://example.com/thread?id=1 VS http://example.com/thread/?id=1 <- the result really depends on how you handle your .htaccess.

Advantages in no trail:

1. Prettier, some might say
2. It's easier to remember and it's more readable to always add a slash when appending paths to a variable string than not. i.e. it's easier to remember $baseURL . '/path.php' than $baseURL . 'path.php'