[Nmh-workers] Question on compath() in sbr/path.c

[Jon Steinhart]

Howdy.  I've been trying to figure out exactly what nmh does with folder names
so that I can have an external-to-nmh program treat them the same way.  I
noticed something curious in compath() in sbr/path.c

I'm guessing that the purpose of this function is to "compact a path" by
removing extraneous elements.

One of the tests (second one under case '.') looks for a trailing /.. on a
path.  It would convert a path of /foo/bar/.. to /foo.

This doesn't seem correct to me.  It works unless bar is a symbolic link.  A
/.. after a symbolic link climbs up the tree on the link target side of things,
not the link name.

So two questions:  Should I fix it and what's the correct fix?  If it should
be fixed, the only thing that I can see doing is to remove this section of code
because there's no requirement that the path passed to compath() exists, making
it impossible to test the path elements.

Jon