page_link and switch_page with / prefixed path is incorrectly treated as relative path

[sfc-gh-jcarroll]

Checklist

• I have searched the existing issues for similar issues.
• I added a very descriptive title to this issue.
• I have provided sufficient information below to help reproduce this issue.

Summary

If I do st.page_link("/pages/page2.py"), this is treated as a relative path from the main app file, instead of an absolute path. This is unintuitive, since / prefixed file paths are usually treated as absolute from the root folder.

The same behavior is also true for st.switch_page()

Reproducible Code Example

import streamlit as st

# Assuming I have a relative page at `pages/page2.py`, this link will work
# I'd expect it to fail
st.page_link("/pages/page2.py")

Steps To Reproduce

Run the app above, see that it works

Expected Behavior

Throw an error since there's no /pages/page2.py from the root

Current Behavior

No error, it works (unexpectedly)

Is this a regression?

• Yes, this used to work in a previous version.

Debug info

• Streamlit version: 1.31
• Python version: 3.11
• Operating System: Mac
• Browser: N/A

Additional Information

No response

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