Subject: Re: Mysterious gdb behavior.
From: Robert Collins <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: 28 Jul 2002 21:20:53 +1000

On Sun, 2002-07-28 at 21:12, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
> OK. Is anyone going to actually suggest a solution here? And don't 
> say "rename the directory", I don't imagine renaming the home 
> directory to something other than your user name is going to do 
> anything but cause more trouble.

I won't say what you don't want to hear. You might consider searching
the friendly archives, because they *tell* you what is worse - a home
dir with spaces or a home dir w/o spaces.
 
> Really, spaces in path names shouldn't bother any part of the system. 

should != doesn't. I agree, it sucks. Still, unless you want to patch
all the broken software out there (which BTW includes pure win32
programs last time I checked), then you need to deal with it one way or
another.

> Wherever path names with spaces are handed off to shells or whatever 
> they should be quoted, that's all. 

*Please*, research before asserting. Because non-cygwin1.dll linked
programs don't unquote arguments this solution actually sucks worse than
the current status quo.

> If path names that went into 
> scripts, parameter lists, or whatever were defensively quoted there 
> would never be an issue.

Untrue, as indicated above.

> If it really can't be made to work, then 
> perhaps the system should automatically use the short version of 
> names with spaces in them? 

Those short names do not always exist - you'll need a fallback for those
cases. It's an interesting idea though, perhaps you'd like to contribute
a patch. I'd be happy to give you pointers on what do look at to create
such a patch.

Rob