Re: paths are sensative to double separators

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Mike Mattie <codermattie@gmail.com> writes:
> I have noticed that paths in Emacs are sensitive to double separators e.g:
>
> (load /foo/bar/baz.el)  ;; works
> (load /foo/bar//baz.el) ;; broken
>
> The same behavior occurs with (find-file).
>
> This doesn't seem like a good thing. Is there a good reason for
> it that I am not aware of ?

It's a feature, as it makes filename entry more convenient, as you can
enter absolute filenames without erasing the existing path when entering
a filename.

Perhaps if Emacs were designed today, it might not do this pervasively,
and instead might just restrict this behavior to the filename prompting
functions (see, e.g. file-name-shadow-mode).

However, the current behavior has not been a problem in practice, as far
as I'm aware; the only place doubled slashes seem common is at the
beginning of a filename (because of naive DIR "/" REL_NAME concatention,
 with DIR == "/") , in which case the emacs behavior causes no change.

-Miles

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