(expand-file-name "/..")

Evaluating the expression below leads to strange results that are contradicting the doc-string which claims that "." and ".." would be removed. (expand-file-name "/..") => "/.." The good news is that at least this is FSF compatible behavior. FSF Emacs documents this weirdness saying: “For technical reasons, this function can return correct but non-intuitive results for the root directory; for instance, (expand-file-name ".." "/") returns "/..". For this reason, use (directory-file-name (file-name-directory dirname)) to traverse a filesystem tree, not (expand-file-name ".." dirname).” Their suggested workaround is of course not correct in cases where `dirname' ends with `directory-sep-char': (directory-file-name (file-name-directory "/foo/bar/../")) => "/foo/bar/.." <<<< WRONG (expand-file-name "/foo/bar/../") => "/foo/" <<<< RIGHT It doesn't occur to me why it would be difficult to return (expand-file-name "/..") => "/" and (expand-file-name "/.") => "/" respectively. History? Looking at the code I find this comment: /* `/../' is the "superroot" on certain file systems. */ Is there any file system still in use with this concept? Thanks Marcus _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta