The message was put in origially so that it couldn't be masked when someone removed a file, and the '.' was ignored.
At some point, it looks as if the '.' was re-enabled on the command, so it no longer shows the status message.
As for the slash, this just depends on where you are doing the command. If using the edit-box, you need the slash to say it's a command. If using a remote/alias/popup script, the slash is not needed, as every line is considered a command.