From: Thomas Witt [mailto:witt@ive.uni-hannover.de]
> I propose the following changes to the filesystem path interface in order to
> solve the problem of rooted/absolute paths.
>
> I'd like to introduce the notion of a path 'root' and of an 'absolute path'.
>
> Root:
> A filessystem can have multiple roots(e.g. C:;D:) each filesystem has at least
> one root. A path can be rooted. That means it belongs to the hierarchie of
> its root.

I think of the windows c:, d: as being analogous to the host name of a URL. From my viewpoint these are all absolute paths:

http://host.com/foo/bar
http:/foo/bar
c:/foo/bar
/foo/bar

The first two are both defined as absolute URLs, with and without an authority. I believe "absolute" and "drive" are orthogonal. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm in favor of a current_directory() that includes the drive on Windows, and a relative_to() that operates in the manner of relativeURI + baseURI.

Glen