Require / lua-searchers / findfile: Why is the dot replaced by the dir separator?

[Seppl Vorderhörer <Seppl.Vorderhoerer@...>]

Hello,

I'm using Lua 5.2 directly embedded in another program (compiled as C++ 
code).

When using "require(SomePath)" inside scripts I saw, that require 
(beside a lot of other things) also does a replacement inside SomePath 
of "." with the directory separator ("\" in my use case, as I'm using 
windows).

After some digging in the manuals and the code I found out, that this 
substitution is not configurable for the standard lua Searcher used. 
Both the standard Lua and C searchers (functions searcher_C and 
searcher_Lua) use the internal function findfile which itself uses 
searchpath() but unfortunately with a hardcoded "." as separator.

For this I have two questions:
1.) Why is this behaviour hardcoded? Shouldn't there be some 
configuration possibility like for the other special characters used 
e.g. in package.config?

2.) Is it a good idea to use a special character that has another 
meaning on some (or basically most) file systems in existence? "." and 
".." are used for "current" or "parent directory" under Windows.

3.) What is the point of this replacement when looking for a filename as 
done in findfile() anyway? Actually I don't see the reason, why this is 
done at all and I have the feeling, that I miss something here.

Background:
What I try to achieve is to make require work with relative pathnames, 
especially with being able to reach parent directories of certain scripts.
I checked the mailing lists and found already some discussions about 
that but nothing describing the issue above.

What I see is that if I try something like

    require("..\\OtherDir\\OtherFile.lua")

this fails due to the fact that the internally used function findfile() 
replaces the dots by directory separators.
A simple patch not replacing the "." and voi'la I can use relative paths 
containing "." or ".." without any problem.

Is there a reason behind this behaviour and is there maybe a possibility 
to achive the same without patching the original Lua source files?

Greetings,
Seppl