Preciseness of link URLs

does http://www.a.com/dir equal http://www.a.com/dir/ equal..

[xy123]

Hi

If I had a page:
[a.com...]

that I'm trying to get inbound links to via a link campaign, and other sites link to me using different, but valid, forms of the url i.e

[a.com...]
or
[a.com...]
or
[a.com...]

Is Google (+others) smart enough to treat these all the same, ie the last one, and assign all the incoming PR to it as I'd wish?

Sure hope so.

[Webber]

I had this problem. I asked the linkers to put up an URL with a user tracker (?AFL).
When Google indexed my site, it was indexed with?AFL. Because I have partly dynamic pages, nothing got indexed. Only the background and sideline.
So I asked the linkers not to link to?AFL anymore.
Now my problem starts. Not all linkers responded. Half is linking with?AFL and half without. My site is indexed twice in Google now.
Once www.____.com/?AFL
And once www.___.com

I believe I would get a much better ranking if all linkers linked to the same URL.

(The AFL URL is slowly dropping down, because the links are replaced. The other URL is slowly going up.)

[Webber]

Check this too:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[xy123]

Webber: Thanks for that other thread link.

That thread is not conclusive on this subject though - anyone else got any input on this?