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Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 09:46:15 +1000 (EST)
From: luke.kendall@cisra.canon.com.au
Subject: Problem in executable file mechanism
To: cygwin@cygwin.com
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Message-Id: <20030415234616.2228634C55@nevin.research.canon.com.au>

Currently in a Cygwin shell, if you invoke a command called, say,
xx.exe, and there is a directory of that name earlier in your PATH, the
xx command will simply fail silently with no error and 0 exit status.

It appears that the check finds an executable file (the directory),
considers the search to have finished, and then tries to execute the
directory and fails.

This situation can't happen under Unix within a single directory, of
course, since commands don't have magic concealable (.exe) suffixes. 
But you can have a directory with the same name as a command, in a
directory earlier on your PATH, yet the directory is not executed.  But
again, under Cygwin, this case also makes the command fail.

The problem does not occur under a DOS shell, either.

luke

PS:

We discovered this here after installing ici version 4, which packages
up all its modules under a directory called ici, in the same directory
as ici.exe (to guarantee easy finding of the modules no matter how ici
is invoked).  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ici/


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