What:

• Fix OpenAPI parsing/conversion for path-level $ref values that point to #/components/pathItems/*.
• Add a parameterized regression test that covers both OpenAPI 3.0.1 and 3.1.0 with the same components.pathItems sample shape.

Why:

• Specs using components.pathItems were failing validation on 3.0.1 (attribute components.pathItems is unexpected) and operations were being dropped (API Operations: 0) in both 3.0.1 and 3.1.0 test scenarios.

How:

• Introduced parser preprocessing in OpenApiSpecification that inlines path-level #/components/pathItems/* refs into concrete path items before parsing.
• Applied the same preprocessing path in both fromYAML(...) and checkSpecValidity(...).
• For OpenAPI 3.0.x, removed components.pathItems after inlining to avoid parser warnings about unsupported attributes.
• Kept existing additionalProperties preprocessing intact.

Checklist:

• Unit Tests
• Build passing locally (targeted tests were run; full suite not run)
• Sonar Quality Gate (N/A)
• Security scans don't report any vulnerabilities (N/A)
• Documentation added/updated (share link) (N/A)
• Sample Project added/updated (share link) (N/A)
• Demo video (share link) (N/A)
• Article on Website (share link) (N/A)
• Roadmpap updated (share link) (N/A)
• Conference Talk (share link) (N/A)

Issue ID:
Closes: N/A

Validation:

• ./gradlew :specmatic-core:test --tests "io.specmatic.conversions.OpenApiSpecificationTest.checkSpecValidity should accept components pathItems references"
• ./gradlew :specmatic-core:test --tests "io.specmatic.conversions.OpenApiSpecificationTest.should pass checkSpecValidity with valid openapi file" --tests "io.specmatic.conversions.OpenApiSpecificationTest.checkSpecValidity should throw ContractException when a valid openapi file gets parsed with issues" --tests "io.specmatic.conversions.OpenApiSpecificationTest.parser errors should be printed as a WARNING statement on the console"