Path Terminal Separator Policy

Enforce a literal POSIX terminal slash policy while preserving absolute root; no directory existence claim.

Description

Enforce a literal POSIX terminal slash policy while preserving absolute root; no directory existence claim.

A trailing-separator policy can add or remove terminal slashes while treating the root specially.

When to use this tool

Enforce a literal POSIX terminal slash policy while preserving absolute root; no directory existence claim.

Prepare the supplied path, requireTerminalSeparator fields for this operation.
Compare the complete example with the representation used by your own input before carrying the result into another step.

How to use the tool and how it works

Enter path, requireTerminalSeparator. Use the exact text syntax, units and index conventions explained below.
Run the tool. If input validation fails, correct the supplied fields before interpreting any result.
Read result.path. Interpret false, null and empty lists using the distinctions below; they can be valid outputs.

Reject NUL and remove all trailing slashes to obtain base. If required return base plus one slash; otherwise preserve a slash-only absolute root as slash and return base for other paths.^[1]

Input field	Meaning and representation	Accepted input
path	path.	Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above
requireTerminalSeparator	Explicit choice for require terminal separator; supply a boolean rather than a text label.	true or false

Output field	Interpretation
result	Object containing the named outputs below.
result.path	The path value under the stated formula or text convention.

json

{
  "input": {
    "path": "a///",
    "requireTerminalSeparator": false
  },
  "output": {
    "result": {
      "path": "a"
    }
  }
}

Limitations and assumptions

Required-separator mode maps empty input to slash. No filesystem type, existence or canonical path is checked.
Every declared top-level field is required and unexpected fields are rejected. Numeric inputs must be finite; ordinary text fields are bounded to 8,192 UTF-16 code units, with tighter operation-specific limits where stated.
String lists have at most 128 entries of at most 128 code units; matrices have at most 128 rows and columns. Larger numeric lists and parsed JSON have separate bounded budgets. Nonfinite results and excessively large serialized outputs are rejected.
Indexes are zero-based and spans have an exclusive end unless explicitly stated otherwise. A valid false, null or empty-list result is distinct from malformed input.

Alternative or Complementary methods

Use a filesystem-aware implementation with appropriate platform semantics for actual file operations. Literal slash components, Unicode comparison and filename plans do not resolve symlinks or atomically reserve a destination.

References

Tool behavior and example: Path Terminal Separator Policy — tool.io

Similar or alternative tools

Lexical Path Separator Transcoder
Transcode literal path separators only, without drive, UNC, root, escape, symlink or filesystem semantics.
Path Component Name Budget Checker
Audit lexical POSIX component UTF-8 byte budgets against an explicit limit; not a universal NAME_MAX or filesystem encoding claim.