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Subject: Re: Limitation of setenv for tcsh: Too many arguments
To: "KAVALAGIOS Panagiotis (EEAS-EXT)"
 <Panagiotis.KAVALAGIOS@ext.eeas.europa.eu>,
        "cygwin@cygwin.com" <cygwin@cygwin.com>
References: <0d66260ff1314bf693caa6cbb6647547@BELBRU-EXMP101.eeas.europa.eu>
From: Eliot Moss <moss@cs.umass.edu>
Message-ID: <4a7542e2-9f38-9e72-3229-ca39feab66d1@cs.umass.edu>
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 08:21:06 -0500
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On 1/8/2021 5:13 AM, KAVALAGIOS Panagiotis (EEAS-EXT) wrote:
 > Dear all,
 >
 > There is a limitation for tcsh (setenv: Too many arguments) to set the PATH environmental 
variable as you can see in the attached file with the steps to reproduce it. It probably looks like 
tcsh limitation and not Cygwin. The "set path=( ${HOME}/bin $path)" is not complaining and sets the 
path, but it also interprets the space in the paths as a separator. The only Cygwin related issue is 
probably the /usr/bin that it is added twice. Any workarounds?

I saw another response, but will add that I typically do something more like:

set PATH="${HOME}/bin:${PATH}"

THat takes care of quoting.  However, you want to avoid duplicate entries.
Something like this helps with that:

[ -z "${PATH##*${HOME}/bin:*}" ] || {
   PATH="${HOME}/bin:${PATH}"
}

I suppose it is slightly dangerous in that it would also match
/foo/${HOME}/bin, but ${HOME} is absolute and such a match seems unlikely.
Still, you could do:

[ -z "${PATH##${HOME}/bin:*}" ]

to check if it is first on the path, and

[ -z "${PATH##*:${HOME}/bin:*}" ]

to see if it is in the middle, and

[ -z "${PATH##*:${HOME}/bin}" ]

to see if it as at the end.  This leads to:

[ -z "${PATH##${HOME}/bin:*}" ] || [ -z "${PATH##*:${HOME}/bin:*}" ] || [ -z 
"${PATH##*:${HOME}/bin}" ] || {
   PATH="${HOME}/bin:$PATH}"
}

Because of the three first/middle/end possibilities, this is what comes to
mind.  _Maybe_ you could get a more elegant solution using bash arrays, but
this is not that long as a piece of bash code.

Regards - Eliot Moss
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