functions file:descendants and file:children return relative paths, if input parameter $dir is a relative folder path. I regard this as a bug - relative folder paths should be resolved against the current working directory, so that a relative path and the corresponding absolute path are equivalent parameters. The functions should always return absolute paths, as the documentation promises. 

After all, a key use case is to find files which to access, and the accessor functions (doc(), json:doc(), unparsed-text() etc.) do *not* resolve relative paths against the current working dir.

Kind regards,

Hans-Jürgen