Oops, thanks for the correction! I must've seen this with other characters (most likely double quotes) and not realized slashes and backslashes are an exception

Oops, thanks for the correction! I must've seen this with other characters (most likely double quotes) and not realized slashes and backslashes are an exception. Though ironically that still doesn't help you strip the last component, since it could still be a volume mount point. Like you don't want C:\mnt\..\foo to suddenly become C:\foo, just like how you don't want \\.\Server\Share1\..\Share2 to become \\.\Server\Share2, or for \\.\C:\..\HarddiskVolume1 to become \\.\HarddiskVolume1, etc.