the curious case of backslashes in uploaded file pathnames on xampp + cake

Question

XAMPP + Cake installation on Windows 7 causes the curious problem of introducing backslashes in pathnames of uploaded files.

Answer 1

Is it a case of needing to define the directory separator? See this from webroot/index.php:

/**
 * Use the DS to separate the directories in other defines
 */
    if (!defined('DS')) {
        define('DS', '/');//DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);

}

/**