Drupal locale url langauge negotiation causes all forward slashes to be stripped from profile image URLs in the baseURL path

I've located the source of the problem: civicrm/CRM/Contact/BAO/contact.php

if ( module_exists('locale') && $mode = variable_get( 'language_negotiation', LANGUAGE_NEGOTIATION_NONE ) ) {
global $language;
if( isset( $language->prefix ) )

{ $baseUrl= str_replace( $language->prefix.'/', '', $config->userFrameworkBaseURL ); }

}

on line 772.

The str_replace here is supposed to strip out the additional forward slash but when using the default language the is not prefix so the the str_replace ends up stripping all the forward slashes from the baseURL resulting in an image url of http:www.mydomain.comsites/default/files/civicrm...

Changing line 771 to:
if( isset( $language->prefix ) && $language->prefix != '' ) {
fixes the problem but as I am not php expert I'm wanted to check whether this is the correct way to go about it.