catfile/catdir collapses two leading slashes //

repellent has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

use File::Spec::Functions qw(catfile splitdir);

my @pathnames = splitdir '//special/semantic//path/definition';

my $path1 = catfile @pathnames;   # '/special/semantic/path/definition
+'
my $path2 = join '/', @pathnames; # '//special/semantic//path/definiti
+on'
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But in Files and Filesystems:

Don't assume that in pathnames you can collapse two leading slashes // into one: some networking and clustering filesystems have special semantics for that. Let the operating system to sort it out.

What gives?

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