On 07/12/16 00:10, Brandon Williams wrote:
> On 12/06, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> POSIX cares about treating "//" at the very beginning of the path
>> specially.  Is that supposed to be handled here, or by a lot higher
>> level up in the callchain?
> 
> What exactly does "//" mean in this context? (I'm just naive in this
> area)

This refers to a UNC path (ie Universal Naming Convention) which
is used to refer to servers, printers and other 'network resources'.
Although this started (many moons ago) in unix, it isn't used too
much outside of windows networks! (where it is usually denoted by
\\servername\path).

You can see the relics of unix UNC paths if you look at the wording
for basename() in the POSIX standard. Note the special treatment of
the path which 'is exactly "//"', see 
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/basename.html

ATB,
Ramsay Jones

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