Am I on the wrong track?

[BriC]

I'm stuck with the majority of my real knowledge being in the windows world. I'm only a noob in the world of php and my development knowledge is slim (though I've done a small bit with other server languages, some javascript, etc).

However, .... I'm starting to dabble more actively. I got an account with 'awardspace' which offers free (and somewhat hamstrung) accounts which do not allow the 'realpath' function. I've installed wordpress and was hoping to install a photoblog plugin ... which uses realpath. I was wondering if realpath could be replaced with something like:

function canonicalize($address)
{
   $address = explode('/', $address);
   $keys = array_keys($address, '..');

   foreach($keys AS $keypos => $key)
   {
       array_splice($address, $key - ($keypos * 2 + 1), 2);
   }

   $address = implode('/', $address);
   $address = str_replace('./', '', $address);
} 

This (and other functions) were found here:
http://ca3.php.net/realpath

Am I wasting my time? (How easy is this likely to be for a relative beginner like myself?)
Thanks.
/Brian

[sneakyimp]

not sure but i think the difference between realpath and your function is that realpath also deals with aliases and virtual file systems which might evaluate to some other real path. not sure though.

getting it to work within the context of those two applications might not be so difficult. what's the worst that could happen? you write a few files to the wrong folder?

if you're concerned about security issues, i don't think realpath provides any security above what youre trying with canonicalize().