Well, this is buggy: try with
.bashrc or with ... Additionally it's common for programs that accept filenames to also accept pathnames (or rather to accept pathnames in the first place; then they accept filenames automatically because each filename is also a pathname). Average *nix user does expect such programs to do so. For this answer to work, you need to make sure you're not working with a pathname containing /, otherwise /etc/pam.d/login, /bin/../ or ./whatever will bite you.