Hi. Boost.Filesystem's path::normalize() function does not remove the trailing '\\.' element and my guess is that it should. I'm using Boost 1.34.0 on Windows XP sp2 with MSVC 7.1. Some expected normalization examples: '.' --> '.' '\\' --> '\\' 'aaa\\..' --> '.' 'aaa\\bbb\\..' --> 'aaa' 'aaa' --> 'aaa' Some unexpected normalization examples: '\\.' --> '\\.' (expected '\\' ) 'aaa\\..\\.' --> '.\\.' (expected '.' ) 'aaa\\..\\.\\.' --> '.\\.' (expected '.' ) 'aaa\\..\\.\\.\\.' --> '.\\.' (expected '.' ) 'aaa\\bbb\\..\\.' --> 'aaa\\.' (expected 'aaa') 'aaa\\.' --> 'aaa\\.' (expected 'aaa') Hope this helps... Best regards, Jurko Gospodnetić