Subject: Re: Problem executing a .bat script in a directory with spaces using bash
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2004 05:05:42 -0700

Christopher Cobb wrote:

> I use the following shell function cmd() to invoke batch files.  It removes
> cygwinisms from the PATH and the environment first and does some argument
> pre-processing.  It also seems to fix the space problem.

Interesting function.  However, I found that it chokes if the name of
the command to run has spaces, even if they are properly quoted on the
command line, e.g.

$ cmd /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/something\ with\ a\ space/test.bat
'c:Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

If you enable "set -x" and run it you see that it's ultimately trying to
execute:

eval /winxp/system32/cmd.exe /c 'c:\Program Files\something with a
space\test.bat'

...which then acutally tries to run:

/winxp/system32/cmd.exe /c c:Program Filessomething with a spacetest.bat

I'm not sure why 'eval' is needed here at all but I assume there's a
good reason.  I'm no scripting guru and the levels of quoting here are
really nasty.  However, I found the following version seems to fix the
issue for me.  It does explicit quoting on the $c part so that the eval
line gets $c with shell-quoting already applied, which it then removes.

cmd ()
{
    ( local c=`cygpath -w "$1"|sed -r 's@([^a-z0-9.:])@\\\\\\1@gi'`;
    shift;
    local cmd=`cygpath -u $COMSPEC`;
    while [ $# != 0 ]; do
        if [ -f "$1" ]; then
            local args="$args '`cygpath -w $1`'";
        else
            if [ -d "$1" ]; then
                local args="$args '`cygpath -w $1 | sed 's@\\\\\$@@'`'";
            else
                local args="$args '$1'";
            fi;
        fi;
        shift;
    done;
    PATH=`echo $PATH |
          tr : '\n' |
          egrep -vw '^(/usr/local/bin|/usr/bin|/bin|/usr/X11R6/bin)$' |
          tr '\n' :`;
    unset BASH_ENV COLORTERM CYGWIN DISPLAY HISTCONTROL MAKE_MODE;
    unset MANPATH PKG_CONFIG_PATH PS1 PWD SHLVL TERM USER _;
    unset CVS CVSROOT CVS_RSH GEN_HOME GROOVY_HOME TOMCAT_DIR;
    eval $cmd /c $c $args )
}

This version successfully allows you to do:

cmd /posix/path/with\ spaces\ in\ it/file.bat

..and have it work correctly.

-----

I've used a simiar function for a while in the past, but both it and
this still suffer from one really annoying flaw: if an argument that is
meant to be a filename does not exist, the script will not windows-ize
it.  The context that this comes up is that I would like to be able to
run a windows editor, passing it a posix filespec on the command line of
a file that does not exist:

cmd /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/UltraEdit/uedit32.exe ~/foo

If ~/foo already exists then this is properly translated into:

/winxp/system32/cmd.exe /c 'c:\Program Files\UltraEdit\uedit32.exe'
'C:\cygwin\home\brian\foo'

However, if ~/foo is a new file that does not exist, then the script
will not convert it into a windows path, and the win32 program gets
really confused.  I guess you could assume all arguments are filenames
and "cygpath -w" them, but I'm sure that ends up breaking yet something
else.  Any ideas?

Brian

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