cd into // works?

[Chet Ramey]

> >due to a typo, I typed
> >
> >[klamath] ~>cd //
> >
> >today. Okay, I'm used to the shell[1] changing any // into /, so I
> >expected to get to /. Now, I got there, but pwd/$PWD still have "//" in
> >them?

This is from the bash FAQ:

E10) Why does `cd //' leave $PWD as `//'?

POSIX.2, in its description of `cd', says that *three* or more leading
slashes may be replaced with a single slash when canonicalizing the
current working directory.

This is, I presume, for historical compatibility.  Certain versions of
Unix, and early network file systems, used paths of the form
//hostname/path to access `path' on server `hostname'.

Chet

-- 
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Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://tiswww.tis.cwru.edu/~chet/