From f9e3641ef10afe52a4be79aeb8f3d22416169706 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tomaz Vieira <tom.fogaca@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:22:27 +0000
Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Fixes parsing of relative file:// URLs

---
 src/zarr/storage/_utils.py     | 16 ++++++++--------
 tests/test_store/test_utils.py | 16 +++++++++++++---
 2 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/zarr/storage/_utils.py b/src/zarr/storage/_utils.py
index ca10b0679e..545094beed 100644
--- a/src/zarr/storage/_utils.py
+++ b/src/zarr/storage/_utils.py
@@ -90,16 +90,16 @@ def parse_store_url(url: str) -> ParsedStoreUrl:
 
     parsed = urlparse(url)
 
-    # netloc is the "host" part (store name for memory://, bucket for s3://, etc.)
-    name = parsed.netloc or None
+    if parsed.scheme in ("file", ""):
+        name = None
+        path = url.removeprefix("file://")
+    else:
+        # netloc is the "host" part (store name for memory://, bucket for s3://, etc.)
+        name = parsed.netloc or None
 
-    # For URLs with a scheme and netloc (like memory://store/path or s3://bucket/key),
-    # strip the leading slash from the path component.
-    # For local paths (no scheme), preserve the path as-is.
-    if parsed.scheme and parsed.netloc:
+        # For URLs with a non-file scheme and netloc (like memory://store/path or s3://bucket/key),
+        # strip the leading slash from the path component.
         path = parsed.path.lstrip("/")
-    else:
-        path = parsed.path
 
     return ParsedStoreUrl(scheme=parsed.scheme, name=name, path=path, raw=url)
 
diff --git a/tests/test_store/test_utils.py b/tests/test_store/test_utils.py
index 291526fab8..26cf760e89 100644
--- a/tests/test_store/test_utils.py
+++ b/tests/test_store/test_utils.py
@@ -39,9 +39,19 @@ def test_s3_url(self) -> None:
             scheme="s3", name="bucket", path="key", raw="s3://bucket/key"
         )
 
-    def test_file_url(self) -> None:
-        result = parse_store_url("file:///tmp/test")
-        assert result.scheme == "file"
+    def test_absolute_file_url(self) -> None:
+        url = "file:///something/absolute"
+        result = parse_store_url(url)
+        assert result == ParsedStoreUrl(
+            scheme="file", name=None, path="/something/absolute", raw=url
+        )
+
+    def test_relative_file_url(self) -> None:
+        url = "file://something/relative"
+        result = parse_store_url(url)
+        assert result == ParsedStoreUrl(
+            scheme="file", name=None, path="something/relative", raw=url
+        )
 
     def test_local_absolute_path(self) -> None:
         result = parse_store_url("/local/path")

From 4092d9b1241cca9362e24a0dcf8f9fa0556608fb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tomaz Vieira <tom.fogaca@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:59:20 +0000
Subject: [PATCH 2/2] Add file to changes/

---
 changes/4533.bugfix.md | 11 +++++++++++
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 changes/4533.bugfix.md

diff --git a/changes/4533.bugfix.md b/changes/4533.bugfix.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..bb5f7cb5a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changes/4533.bugfix.md
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+Properly parses relative `file://` URLs
+
+URLs with a relative file path like
+
+`file://a/b`
+
+were being parsed in `parse_store_url` into something like
+
+`ParsedStoreUrl(..., path="b")`
+
+because `a` was being seen as a hostname.