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Unlike many other version control systems, Subversion's branches exist as normal filesystem directories in the repository, not in an extra dimension. These directories just happen to carry some extra historical information.

Subversion has no internal concept of a branch—only copies. When you copy a directory, the resulting directory is only a “branch” because you attach that meaning to it. You may think of the directory differently, or treat it differently, but to Subversion it's just an ordinary directory that happens to have been created by copying.