Thanks for the education (hopefully a slight detour for you 8-). I included '/' to convey uniform behavior across platforms.

I will take it that the difference in what os.path.split() returns on Win32 vs. Linux is not a bug in Python since its Win32 users have come to expect the response it gives ? if yes, please point me to a resource (i.e, if you are aware, else do not bother 8-) that identifies such other conundrums.