eparators are ignored: <code>a/b</code> and <code>a//b</code> both have components <code>a</code>
and <code>b</code>.</p></li>
<li><p>Occurrences of <code>.</code> are normalized away, <em>except</em> if they are at
the beginning of the path (in which case they are often meaningful
in terms of path searching). So, for example, <code>a/./b</code>, <code>a/b/</code>,
<code>/a/b/.</code> and <code>a/b</code> all have components <code>a</code> and <code>b</code>, but <code>./a/b</code>
has a leading current dir