Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@sourceware.cygnus.com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@sources.redhat.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@sources.redhat.com Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.0.20010301173204.02448c90@mailhost> X-Sender: paulson@mailhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2 Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 17:51:52 -0800 To: cygwin@cygwin.com From: John Paulson Subject: Re: New symlinks. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed What should be done about the .lnk extension? How confused will users be about the inclusion/exclusion of the extension? I think a strong argument can be made that it should behave the same way as the .exe extension does. And, that having it work this way will not unduly confuse users. To satisfy my curiousity, I did the following: $ ls -al `type -p gcc` -rwxr-xr-x 1 administ None 73216 Dec 26 20:38 /usr/bin/gcc* -- Note that the .exe extension is not displayed $ cygpath -w `type -p gcc` c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc -- Again, note the non-existence of the .exe $ cygpath -w `type -p gcc` c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc -- Even when the windows path is requested, the .exe is missing $ ls -l 'c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc' -rwxr-xr-x 1 administ None 73216 Dec 26 20:38 c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc* -- Yep, .exe still not there, even when given a windows path $ cat `type -p gcc` | wc cat: /usr/bin/gcc: No such file or directory 0 0 0 -- Hmmm... A user might think something broke. I have not done a search of the archives to determine how often this asymmetry has been noted by users. I don't recall having seen this mentioned in the year or so I've been subscribed, but then most of neurons have been fried by MFC... Therefore, using possibly faulty reasoning by analogy, I think that the missing lnk (sorry) solution will not cause as many problems as has been feared. At least, not for those users who are dealing with symlinks in an interactive fashion. In fact, the missing lnk will work better than the missing exe; the "cat ... | wc" examples above will work. ---------------------------- John Paulson PowerTV, Inc. Tel: 408/777-5255 Fax: 408/777-4782 mailto:paulson@powertv.com http://www.powertv.com/ -- Want to unsubscribe from this list? Check out: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple