emacs 23.2 OS X file path issue

[Joseph Harrington]

I have not posted to this group before but am looking for help with an
Emacs issue. I am running Emacs 23.2.1 on a Mac with OS X 10.6.3. When
I call Emacs from the terminal to open a file that is not in the
current directory, Emacs opens an extra file with the path jumbled.
Let me give an example. At the terminal, I enter the following:

mkdir a; touch a/b; /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs a/b

This causes Emacs to open two files in separate buffers: "a/b" and "a/
a/b". This behavior occurs when I remove my ~/.emacs file, but it does
not occur when I use the -Q, --debug-init, or -nw options. I often
call Emacs from the terminal to open multiple files in different
directories, so this is a bit of a nuisance.

Thanks in advance for any advice on getting around this problem,
Joe