In JNode, the user.dir property holds the

In JNode, the user.dir property holds the notional current directory. When the current directory is "/", getAbsolutePath() on a File with a relative pathname returns a malformed path; e.g. "//jifs/version" instead of "/jifs/version". This causes the 'cat' alias to fail; e.g.

"cat /jifs/version"

works but

"cat jifs/version"

fails with a stack trace. (The actual exception I see is an obscure network failure. It results from the java.io.URL remapping "file://jifs/version" to "ftp://jifs/version" and trying to open an FTP connection to "jifs"!)

A fix for the root problem is attached.