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X-Authentication-Warning: slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs
Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 12:58:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Christopher Spears <cspears2002 AT yahoo DOT com>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: how do emulators work
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Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.56.0405031245350.22282@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
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On Mon, 3 May 2004, Christopher Spears wrote:

> This question may seem kind of basic but how do emulators work?  With
> UNIX, you have a program called the shell (csh, bash, etc.) that
> interprets commands and calls up different utilities (ls, cp, grep,
> etc.).
>  However, cygwin sits inside Windows and is connected to windows.  For
> example, my home directory is /home/Christopher Spears/, which would
> never happen in UNIX because of the space in my name.  Is cygwin really
> UNIX or is it something different?
>
> -Chris

Firstly, <http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#CYNUX>.  That answers your last
question.  Besides, your premise is wrong: a space is a perfectly valid
character in Unix usernames, and nothing stops you from doing

$ useradd "Christopher Spears"

on Linux, with all the associated problems that Cygwin programs incur.
It's just that in Windows spaces in usernames and filenames are much more
common, and thus more visible.

FWIW, the shell in Cygwin behaves almost exactly like the shell in Unix
(because it is, for the most part, the same shell).

And, to answer your first, non-Cygwin-specific, question, try Googling for
'"how emulators work"'.
	Igor
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