What does "path ends in a directory separator" mean and how to work around it?

Question

I just ran hg pull and it pulled two changesets from the central repository. Then I ran hg update, and it gave me this error:

abort: path ends in directory separator: \

I've never encountered this error before. What does it mean? How do I fix the error?

Answer 1

It appears there is a file called "\" in one of the latest change sets, and that's why I'm getting this error. On Macintosh computers, a file named "\" is permissible; but on my version of Windows it is not.

The solution is simply to delete the "\" file as it is unnecessary and will prevent Windows users from updating.