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Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 13:22:41 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-rcm AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: ln and mkshortcut inconsistent in handling of .exe extension
Message-ID: <20031001172241.GC8392@redhat.com>
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On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 05:15:48PM -0400, Matt Swift wrote:
>That's only part of the stated goals of 'ln'.  When CYGWIN contains
>"winsymlinks" (or more accurately, does not contain "nowinsymlinks"
>since "winsymlinks" is the stated default), symbolic links are supposed
>to function both as Cygwin symbolic link and as Windows Shortcuts.
>This is true most of the time, but it is NOT true when the symlink
>target's name given to ln is the name of an executable without its .exe
>extension.  In this case, the file created by ln functions as a Cygwin
>symbolic link as expected but contrary to expectation does *not*
>function as a Windows Shortcut.  The file created by 'ln', considered
>as a Windows Shortcut, is broken.  My points are

  cd /bin
  ln -s pwd foo
  ./foo		# works
  cat ./foo	# fails

Why does running foo work?  Because Windows CreateProcess call does not
need a .exe extension to run a program.  Why does cat fail?  Because
'foo' resolves to 'pwd' and, as far as the Windows CreateFile is
concerned, there is no file called 'pwd'.

So, what you are seeing is a side effect of the way windows operates.  We're
not going to change ln to automatically add a .exe extension.

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