Fix Authentication Issue with Double Slashes in URL

[cosineai]

Summary

This PR addresses the issue where URLs containing double slashes (//) in the path result in authentication failures. The problem was identified as being related to the changes introduced in psf#6644, which did not properly handle double slashes in the URL path.

Changes

• Added a new utility function _remove_path_dot_segments in src/requests/utils.py to normalize URL paths by removing dot segments and reducing double slashes to a single slash.
• Updated the URL path processing to use this new function, ensuring consistent behavior and successful authentication.

Testing

• Verified that URLs with double slashes are correctly normalized and authentication succeeds as expected.

Issue

Fixes the authentication issue described in the task, ensuring similar behavior as before version 2.32.0.

Reproduction Steps

1. Run the provided script to make a POST request to a URL with double slashes in the path.
2. Observe that the request now succeeds without a 401 error.

System Information

• Python: 3.11.2
• Requests: 2.32.3
• Platform: Linux 6.1.0-21-amd64