- * Removes slashes from the string `buf' and substitutes them with something
- * appropriate. This function should be used whenever a path is to be used as
- * (part of) an instance.
+ * Removes slashes ("/") from "buffer". If buffer contains a single slash,
+ * the result will be "root". Leading slashes are removed. All other slashes
+ * are replaced with underscores ("_").
+ * This function is used by plugin_dispatch_values() to escape all parts of
+ * the identifier.