Oh, my, and it's not even correct. I should be checking the *first time* for missing '/' ... and in fact, maybe I could solve the whole dang problem simply by force-appending a '/' to the $loc_string before passing it to the routine (but that's expensive too, as I don't want to do it because files are valid locations.)

I still think there's some theoretical interest here, though.

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor