Comment # 6 on bug 1164895 from Neil Rickert

I'll note that I normally use "csh" (which is really "tcsh") as my shell.

And "csh" has always behaved this way (even before there was a "tcsh").  That
is to say "cd .." prunes the last item from $cwd.  I consider this a feature,
not a bug.  The Bourne shell worked the other way.  But "bash" includes some of
the nice features from "csh", and I guess this is one of them.

If I start a subshell with the "csh" command, then "cd .." will work as you
expect, because $cwd is not passed to the subshell.  However, if I start an
internal subshell by using parentheses, as in
 ( subshell commands )
then $cwd is passed.

It's a matter of getting used to your shell features.

With csh:
  cd /var/run
  pwd

returns "/run".  But bash fakes that, too.

Hmm, if I invoke the shell as "/bin/sh" (instead of as "/bin/bash") it still
behaves that way.  I suppose that's a "bashism".  I don't know whether that
adversely affects any shell scripts.

If there is a bug, it would seem to me that the bug is that even when invoked
as "/bin/bash" it behaves the way you describe.