As reported in <a Stack Overflow question</a>, it looks like there's an evil edge case that's gone wrong in <tt>file normalize</tt>.
<p>
Directory structure setup:
<pre>


->
</pre>
Problem trace:
<pre>
wish% file normalize sidedir_link/fileA.txt

wish% ::utils::realpath sidedir_link/fileA.txt

wish% file normalize

wish% ::utils::realpath

</pre>
<blockquote>“<i>Note:</i> The difference is versus
It's reportedly an issue with both 8.4.9 and 8.6.1 so I expect it to be present in all other 8.4, 8.5 and 8.6 versions.