From: estes AT smarts DOT com (Ken Estes) Subject: Re: Sorting environment 11 Apr 1997 19:42:06 -0700 Sender: daemon AT cygnus DOT com Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199704112005.QAA14340.cygnus.gnu-win32@just.smarts.com> Original-To: smueller AT microsoft DOT com, gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com In-reply-to: <9106B0327B3ACF11ACEF00805FD47A0B02871521 AT RED-67-MSG DOT dns DOT microsoft DOT com> (message from Stephan Mueller on Fri, 11 Apr 1997 12: 30:23 -0700) Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Stephan Mueller wrote: >> Sounds like a bug in whatever implementation of _putenv() you are using. >> I just typed 'set' on my Windows95 machine, in a DOS box, and the >> entries listed look something like: winbootdir COMSPEC PATH PROMPT CTOOLS_PRJ DIRCMD ... BLASTER TERM CMDLINE >> It is conceivable that command.com, in its wackiness is reordering them >> just to spite me, but I doubt it. Parenthetical comment aside, I see no >> evidence that the environment is guaranteed to be sorted. The >> parenthetical comment appears to be wrong. Are you speaking for yourself or MS (when you write from your MS account it appears as if you are offering official commentary on the documentation)? Just because your simple experiment did not uncover the problem does not mean that the documentation is wrong. You have performed NONE of the steps that I have outlined to trigger this problem. I am using WinNT and I am launching my programs from other programs not command.com (which may indeed reorder its envrionment before spawning processes). It is well known that the environment handling in NT is very different from Win95. I try to keep my code portable to both OS so I need to work in the intersection of these constraints. Even if this is not a problem for 95 it is still a problem for NT and must be solved in Cygwin32. The version of _putenv() that I use comes from the MS development studio for C/C++ so any bugs there in are still part of the standard NT envrionment. All documentaion I have seen requires that NT environment be sorted (more then just one parenthetical comment), thus it is a constraint of the Win32 API which intends to be independent of 95/NT and is the target of the Cygwin32 effort. I have personally verified this bug under the conditions I have explained. Ken Estes - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".