Windows path with no slash after drive letter and colon - what does it point to?

Question

I have mistyped a path and instead of c:\\foo.txt wrote c:foo.txt. I expected it to either fail or to resolve to c:\\foo.txt, but instead

Answer 1

This is standard DOS/Windows behavior and has always been like this. Open a command line and see:

C:\Users\Tim>d:              # change current drive to d:
D:\>c:                       # change back to c: - back in the same directory
C:\Users\Tim>cd d:\users     # change current directory ON D:
C:\Users\Tim>cd \            # still same directory - backslash leads to top dir
C:\>d:                       # change current drive to d:
D:\Users>                    # notice that we're now in the directory D:\Users

The drive letter always references the current directory of that drive; the (leading) backslash gets you to the top directory.