Confusing error: "Cannot replace a directory from within"

Dear svn developers,

I tried svn switch the other day with an invalid branch URL. It gave
me the mysterious error message "Cannot replace a directory from
within". After a web search, mostly finding lots of other folks
confused by the same thing. After nearly giving up, I finally realized
the cause was a typo in my branch name. I wonder if there couldn't be
a better diagnostic in this case? My command was

    svn switch svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/branches/py3k-unistr

Surely there's no other interpretation for that argument string than
as a branch URL that would preclude detecting the situation and
printing a better message?

I showed this to Ben Collins-Sussman who siggested to post here.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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