Bug #12261: Windows: File.dirname with 2+ / or 2+ \\ will return // or \\\\

• Status: Open
• Priority: Normal
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -
• Backport: 2.1: UNKNOWN, 2.2: UNKNOWN, 2.3: UNKNOWN
• Tags: win, maybenotbug

[enebo (Thomas Enebo)]

I am working through some File.dirname issues on JRuby and I saw a ruby/spec covering this behavior on windows:

File.dirname('/////').should == '//'

Same result if backslashes are used. Is there a reason for this result? It does not seem useful to me but I am not much of a windows user. I would think in this case it would be '/' since I don't see how this is useful for UNC paths in Ruby? If someone could explain it then I will document this at least in JRuby source code :)

So far all versions of MRI seem to have this behavior.