. Syntactically, the
paths may differ by the normalization described below.</p>

<h3 id='component-types' class='section-header'><a href='#component-types'>Component types</a></h3>
<p>Components come in several types:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Normal components are the default: standard references to files or
directories. The path <code>a/b</code> has two normal components, <code>a</code> and <code>b</code>.</p></li>
<li><p>Current directory components represent the <code>.</code> character. For example,
<code>./a</