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

Thanks for the report and investigating GNU Emacs, Marcus! Marcus Harnisch writes: I suppose the problem is that this expression doesn't have well-defined semantics since conceptually it takes you out of the file system. Unix file systems do define this concept since all directories have a parent pointer (AFAIK), and all set /.. to / (AFAIK). But what this might mean in a filesystem without parent pointers (DOS at least, also Windows NT, VMS IIRC) is unclear. On those systems "/" is not an absolute path! (You need a drive letter.) Note that this is a textual transformation; AFAIK the only system call made in the function is to read /etc/passwd to expand ~USER. I think this is a killer argument for documenting the anomoly, not changing behavior. Of course, I'm very conservative on this kind of thing. Is there a practical problem you experience, or does this inconsistency just bother you? As a matter of coding, it would be easy to make that change. That's what I get already. Even on systems where that is not an absolute path that's well-defined, I think, although I haven't checked that that's the result on Windows. I believe they're referring to operating systems without unified file name spaces (typically those which use devices not mounted on the file hierarchy), which would include Windows. If you want to pursue this, I think you need to ask on emacs-devel. WDOT? _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta