Well, that's exactly what it does.
If you want this:
> I'd like to be able to say
>
> /cgi-bin/myscript/file-in-this-dir
>
> and have the script be able to determine that it really needs to play with
>
> /usr/local/WWW/documents/project/smell-server/file-in-this-dir
You would just have an Alias (or Map/Pass in CERN httpd) for
/file-in-this-dir to the absolute path.
> Perhaps if I explicitely wanted an absolute path, I'd specify
> something like:
>
> /cgi-bin/myscript//full/leading/path/dir/file-in-this-dir
>
> with a double slash.
That's not such a hot idea -- double slashes get removed by most
servers.
-- Cheers, Ari --