Mail Archives: cygwin/2008/08/05/04:03:11
On 4 Aug, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] wrote:
> Luke Kendall wrote on Monday, August 04, 2008 4:18 AM:
>
> > I discovered today that if I try to run Windows Explorer from the
> > Cygwin command line, and give it a pathname with spaces, it fails,
> > but if I give the same command line to a cmd.exe command line,
> > Explorer works!
> >
> > I.e. from Bash, explorer fails with an error message like "The path
> > '/e,c:\temp\space dir' does not exist or is not a directory."
> >
> > I've tried every quote combo I can. If I leave off the /e option
> > then it does open the directory, but without the side pane (which is
> > what you'd expect with the /e option omitted).
> >
> > Bash shell:
> >
> > $ mkdir c:/temp/"space dir"
> >
> > $ explorer /e,c:\\temp\\space\ dir
> > $ # NBG^
> > $ explorer /e,c:\\temp
> > $ # GOOD^
> > $ explorer c:\\temp\\space\ dir
> > $ # GOOD^ (but no side pane)
> > $ explorer /e,"c:\temp\space dir"
> > $ # NBG^
> > $ explorer /e,"\"c:\temp\space dir\""
> > $ # NBG^
> >
> > DOS shell:
> >
> > c>explorer /e,c:\temp\space dir
> > c>rem GOOD^
> > c>explorer /e,"c:\temp\space dir"
> > c>rem GOOD^
> > c>explorer /e,'c:\temp\space dir'
> > c>rem NBG^
> > c>explorer /e,c:\temp\space dir
> > c>rem NBG^
> >
> > Until I tried the same stuff under the DOS shell, I assumed it was
> > explorer.exe that was busted. Now I'm just confused.
> >
> > I find this quite bizarre. Any suggestions? Is bash or Cygwin
> > guessing the /e option is part of a path, and doing some extra
> > quoting of its own or something?
> >
> > I just tried an strace on bash, and it looks like this guess is
> > correct:
> >
> > 140 4166625 [main] bash 5696 spawn_guts: null_app_name 0
> > (c:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe, c:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
> > "/e,c:\temp\space dir")
> >
> > It's collected all the arguments and put them inside double quotes,
> > and if I do that in a DOS shell too I get the exact same failure.
> >
> > If the directory contains no spaces, then bash does this, in contrast:
> >
> > 12217 33394057 [main] bash 5284 spawn_guts: 5284 = spawn_guts
> > (/cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/explorer, c:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe /e,c:\temp)
> >
> > Is there some way to tell Bash/Cygwin not to do this? Or is it
> > simply that my bash is too old?
> >
> > $ bash --version
> > GNU bash, version 3.2.9(10)-release (i686-pc-cygwin) Copyright (C)
> > 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>
> As a work-around, you might try the -x or --explore option of cygstart.
> I use it in the following script (which I cal "explore"), though a
> shell function might be better if you use this a lot.
>
> ====[ cut ]====
> #!/bin/bash
> /bin/cygstart --explore "${1:-.}"
> ====[ cut ]====
>
> "${1:-.}" makes explorer open in the current working directory run
> without an argument.
>
> If this does not do what you want, you could always try launching
> explorer with cygstart (without -x, giving you control of explorer's
> command line arguments) or cmd /c start. And one way to get rid of
> spaces is to go to that directory. You could just
>
> $ pushd /cygpath/c/temp/space\ dir
> $ explorer /e,.
> $ popd
I'd have to cygpath it to Unix format first ...
I found your cygstart suggestion a nicer approach - thanks! It works
well, except that none of the options to prevent the window from taking
focus work when explorer is the thing that gets started. That's
annoying when I run my script to restore bash/Explorer/Internet Explorer
session (i.e. windows) in interactive mode, but I can live with it.
Thanks again!
luke
> Good luck!
>
> - Barry
> - Disclaimer: Statements made herein are not made on behalf of NIAID.
>
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