diff --git a/Lib/urllib/request.py b/Lib/urllib/request.py
index 786055ef0b6..1279322496f 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib/request.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib/request.py
@@ -2273,8 +2273,7 @@ def init(self):
         self.ftp = ftplib.FTP()
         self.ftp.connect(self.host, self.port, self.timeout)
         self.ftp.login(self.user, self.passwd)
-        for dir in self.dirs:
-            self.ftp.cwd(dir)
+        self.ftp.cwd(os.path.join(*self.dirs))
 
     def retrfile(self, file, type):
         import ftplib