When you do

ack foo \hostname\some\path

you get

"ack: \hostname\some\path: No such file or directory"

The problem is in File::Next::reslash(): What happens is that something like "//server/share/directory" gets split into (q<>, q<>, 'share', 'directory'), and File::Spec->catfile() only returns a single slash at the front, which is wrong. Why is this being done? If I specify "//server/share/directory", I really want to use the path "//server/share/directory" and not "/server/share/directory", which won't work.

following symlinks alone is not always bad, following recursive symlinks can be.

adding code to check whether a symlink is recursive shouldnt add much expense, as it can be run after a symlink has been identified. if the symlink refers to a directory under the current starting point, it should be ignored.. thus i propose a config option:

ignore_recursive_symlinks

thanks.