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Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 17:51:52 -0800
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From: John Paulson <munch AT powertv DOT com>
Subject: Re: New symlinks.
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What should be done about the .lnk extension?  How confused will
users be about the inclusion/exclusion of the extension?

I think a strong argument can be made that it should behave the
same way as the .exe extension does.  And, that having it work
this way will not unduly confuse users.  To satisfy my
curiousity, I did the following:

$ ls -al `type -p gcc`
-rwxr-xr-x   1 administ None        73216 Dec 26 20:38 /usr/bin/gcc*

-- Note that the .exe extension is not displayed

$ cygpath -w `type -p gcc`
c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc

-- Again, note the non-existence of the .exe

$ cygpath -w `type -p gcc`
c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc

-- Even when the windows path is requested, the .exe is missing

$ ls -l 'c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc'
-rwxr-xr-x   1 administ None        73216 Dec 26 20:38 
c:\cygnus\cygwin-1.1\bin\gcc*

-- Yep, .exe still not there, even when given a windows path

$ cat `type -p gcc` | wc
cat: /usr/bin/gcc: No such file or directory
       0       0       0

-- Hmmm... A user might think something broke.  I have not done a search
    of the archives to determine how often this asymmetry has been noted
    by users.  I don't recall having seen this mentioned in the year or so
    I've been subscribed, but then most of neurons have been fried by MFC...


Therefore, using possibly faulty reasoning by analogy, I think that the
missing lnk (sorry) solution will not cause as many problems as has been
feared.  At least, not for those users who are dealing with symlinks in
an interactive fashion.  In fact, the missing lnk will work better than
the missing exe; the "cat ... | wc" examples above will work.


----------------------------
John Paulson
PowerTV, Inc.
Tel: 408/777-5255
Fax: 408/777-4782
mailto:paulson AT powertv DOT com
http://www.powertv.com/


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