diff -urN fileutils-4.1.old/src/rm.c fileutils-4.1/src/rm.c
--- fileutils-4.1.old/src/rm.c	Sun Nov 24 15:46:40 2002
+++ fileutils-4.1/src/rm.c	Sun Nov 24 15:46:07 2002
@@ -60,7 +60,21 @@
 #define AUTHORS \
   "Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Richard Stallman, and Jim Meyering"
 
-void strip_trailing_slashes ();
+char *  
+strip_trailing_slashes (char * name) {
+  int origlen = sizeof (name);
+  int newlen = origlen;
+  while ((name [newlen-1] == '/') 
+         || ((name [newlen-1] == '.') && (name [newlen-2] == '/'))) {
+    if (name [newlen-1] == '.')
+      newlen--;
+    newlen--;
+  }
+  if (newlen != origlen) {
+    name [newlen] = '\0'
+  }
+  return name;
+}
 
 /* Name this program was run with.  */
 char *program_name;
@@ -131,6 +145,7 @@
   struct rm_options x;
   int fail = 0;
   int c;
+  char * name;
 
   program_name = argv[0];
   setlocale (LC_ALL, "");
@@ -192,12 +207,16 @@
 
       /* Stripping slashes is harmless for rmdir;
 	 if the arg is not a directory, it will fail with ENOTDIR.  */
-      strip_trailing_slashes (argv[optind]);
-      fspec_init_file (&fs, argv[optind]);
-      status = rm (&fs, 1, &x);
-      assert (VALID_STATUS (status));
-      if (status == RM_ERROR)
-	fail = 1;
+      name = strip_trailing_slashes (argv[optind]);
+      if (name == NULL)
+        fail = 1;
+      else {
+        fspec_init_file (&fs, name);
+        status = rm (&fs, 1, &x);
+        assert (VALID_STATUS (status));
+        if (status == RM_ERROR)
+  	  fail = 1;
+      }
     }
 
   remove_fini ();