Hi, I have set up the following directory hierarchy: lstest-dir | +---+------------------+ | | subdir1 subdir3 ---symlink---+ | | +-+---------+ | | | | xxxdir subdir2 <----------------------+ | | xxx.txt yyydir | yyy.txt On my linux system, shell commands like "ls" seem to resolve paths such as "lstest-dir/subdir3/.." to "lstest-dir/subdir1". For instance: $ ls lstest-dir/subdir3/../xxxdir xxx.txt In other words, when a path goes through "<symlink>/..", it seems to be resolved by first following the symlink, then finding the parent directory of the symlink's target. However, it appears that uiop:ensure-directory-pathname resolves ".." in a different way. For instance, on CCL on Linux, when I run: (uiop:ensure-directory-pathname (uiop:parse-native-namestring "lstest-dir/subdir3/..")) I get #P"lstest-dir/" instead of #P"lstest-dir/subdir1". Is there a way to configure ensure-directory-pathname to use a more shell-like behavior, or some other alternative that I might run to preprocess the path to resolve these obscure cases like the shell does? Thanks, Jared -- Jared C. Davis <jared.c.davis@gmail.com> 11410 Windermere Meadows Austin, TX 78759 http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/jared/