Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 16:41:44 +1000 (EST)
From: Luke Kendall <luke.kendall@cisra.canon.com.au>
Subject: RE: Bizarre Cygwin/Explorer/paths problem half-solved
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On  4 Aug, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
>  Hi Luke,
>  
> > 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).
> > 
>  
>  I've had this little gem in my .bash_profile for ages, and it's never failed
>  me regardless of the craziness of the path:
>  
>  # Easy "Explorer here" command
>  x()
>  {
>  	if [ "${1}" = "" ];
>  	then
>  		XPATH=".";
>  	else
>  		XPATH="$(cygpath -w "${1}")";
>  	fi
>  	explorer $XPATH & disown %-
>  }
>  
>  No tree view though.  Lessee what happens if I add a "/e,":
>  
>  # Easy "Explorer here" command with tree control on the left
>  x()
>  {
>  	if [ "${1}" = "" ];
>  	then
>  		# No parameter given, open Explorer in the current bash
>  directory.
>  		XPATH=".";
>  	else
>  		# Open the given path.
>  		XPATH="$(cygpath -w "${1}")";
>  	fi
>  	explorer /e,$XPATH & disown %-
>  }
>  
>  ...yep, that works like a charm too.

True, and thanks, that's interesting!


Don't try this variant, though, since it doesn't work:

    explorer /e,"$XPATH" & disown %-

What happens if you try that innocuous-looking variant is that Cygwin
(or bash?) normalises the path /e,... to a windows path first, producing
\e,...

Well, I though that snippet of info interesting enough to share.

Regards,

luke


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