X-Spam-Check-By:	sourceware.org
Message-ID:	<43F098A3.6060607@byu.net>
Date:	Mon, 13 Feb 2006 07:33:07 -0700
From:	Eric Blake <ebb9 AT byu DOT net>
User-Agent:	Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Windows/20050317)
MIME-Version:	1.0
To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject:	Re: default PATH
References:	<021120062022 DOT 25491 DOT 43EE478C000D242F0000639322007456720A050E040D0C079D0A AT comcast DOT net> <20060212120318 DOT GS14219 AT calimero DOT vinschen DOT de> <20060212165700 DOT GD6042 AT trixie DOT casa DOT cgf DOT cx>
In-Reply-To:	<20060212165700.GD6042@trixie.casa.cgf.cx>
X-IsSubscribed:	yes
Mailing-List:	contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe:	<mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive:	<http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post:	<mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help:	<mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender:	cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To:	mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

According to Christopher Faylor on 2/12/2006 9:57 AM:
> 
> I don't mind protecting people against the evil 3PP which corrupt the
> PATH but, as I said, since we don't get that many complaints about the
> current behavior (which may actually have been in place for a decade) we
> don't want to necessarily penalize those smart people who have correctly
> deduced that Cygwin does a one-to-one translation to/from the windows
> path and have therefore put a ;; in their PATH expecting a translation
> to :: in the Cygwin path.

According to POSIX
(http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap08.html):
"A zero-length prefix is a legacy feature that indicates the current
working directory. It appears as two adjacent colons ( "::" ), as an
initial colon preceding the rest of the list, or as a trailing colon
following the rest of the list. A strictly conforming application shall
use an actual pathname (such as .) to represent the current working
directory in PATH."

Anyone relying on ;; in %PATH% being turned into :: in $PATH is violating
the spirit of POSIX (just because :: must work does not mean that using it
is a good idea).  Such users should be using ;.; turned into :.: instead.

> 
> If we don't get a single person indicating that they rely on the current
> behavior then I'm ok with changing it.  We have a patch ready to be
> checked in, in fact.

No complaints so far; maybe it is time to check in the patch.  Just be
sure that on conversion from cygwin to win32 that '::' becomes ';.;'.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             ebb9 AT byu DOT net
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Cygwin)
Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD8Jij84KuGfSFAYARAr0hAJ48kUwEDazUM4oDTZqXThLjdOeymgCg1YX7
K0C3Tw4ky3dE01zO4hrXzQY=
=Tslh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

- Raw text -