Mail Archives: cygwin/2004/04/21/09:39:49
What is "WDDTT"? It's not in OLOCA, wtf doesn't know about it, and Google
gives only 4 hits, none of them relevant.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Korn
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 9:28 AM
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: RE: filename does not exist but test gives true back
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cygwin-owner On Behalf Of cygwin.20.job
> Sent: 21 April 2004 12:33
> > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: Corinna Vinschen - corinna-cygwin
> >
> > Trailing dots are silently ignored by Windows.
> >
> The problem is hat I passed the filename with the trailing
> dot to a Windows-Program which produced errors and corrupted
> the file without trailing dot.
>
> Any idea how to fix it?
>
> Franz
I'm afraid this is a case of WDDTT. You simply can't. Windoze is utterly
incapable of distinguishing between a filename that ends in a dot and the
same name without a dot at the end: it regards them as exactly the same
name. This is a leftover from the days of dos 8.3 names; a file called
"file" has no extension, and so for old style short dos names to work, it
has to be possible to refer to it as "file." - that is to say, it has a null
extension, and so the dot is optional.
Example:
-------->snip!<--------
C:\artimi.src\davek\dot>echo Hello world >file.test
C:\artimi.src\davek\dot>type file.test
Hello world
C:\artimi.src\davek\dot>type file.test.
Hello world
C:\artimi.src\davek\dot>dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 942E-907E
Directory of C:\artimi.src\davek\dot
21/04/2004 14:21 <DIR> .
21/04/2004 14:21 <DIR> ..
21/04/2004 14:21 14 file.test
1 File(s) 14 bytes
2 Dir(s) 106,017,673,216 bytes free
C:\artimi.src\davek\dot>dir file.test
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 942E-907E
Directory of C:\artimi.src\davek\dot
21/04/2004 14:21 14 file.test
1 File(s) 14 bytes
0 Dir(s) 106,017,673,216 bytes free
C:\artimi.src\davek\dot>dir file.test.
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 942E-907E
Directory of C:\artimi.src\davek\dot
21/04/2004 14:21 14 file.test
1 File(s) 14 bytes
0 Dir(s) 106,017,673,216 bytes free
C:\artimi.src\davek\dot>
-------->snip!<--------
The *only* solution is to rework your program so it doesn't rely on having
identically-named files that differ only in a trailing dot. Why not use a
trailing ~ insted? That's a fairly *nix way of doing things.
cheers,
DaveK
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