Usability issue: svn export of nonexistent directory reports "Cannot replace a directory from within"

I'm new to subversion. I was just working with svn export for the
first time, and accidentally called export on a nonexistent directory
in the repository. This got me the unhelpful error message "Cannot
replace a directory from within," which lead me to thinking I had
corrupted the repository or something similarly unfortunate. Of
course, it turns out I was just trying to export a nonexistant
directory. It would be nice if there were more arguments checking or
error handling, such that a more informative error could be generated.

I observed this behavior on both subversion 1.0.6 with a 1.1.1 ssh+svn
server, and with 1.1.1 against the same server. I then wrote a script
to reproduce it locally and that worked against 1.1.1. I've attached
the script. I'm happy to provide any other information that would be
helpful.

I'm not on dev@subversion, though I will try to keep track of
discussion via the archives.

Richard Tibbetts

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