X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
From: "Dave Korn" <dave DOT korn AT artimi DOT com>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: default PATH
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 18:59:18 -0000
Message-ID: <006b01c62ce1$c3ae94a0$a501a8c0@CAM.ARTIMI.COM>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; 	charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
In-Reply-To: <43E9ECB4.1070905@byu.net>
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:cygwin-unsubscribe-archive-cygwin=delorie DOT com AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

On 08 February 2006 13:06, Eric Blake wrote:


>>>> PATH is "inherited" from my WinXP environment as usual but it is not
>>>> prepend with "/bin" like before the upgrade, and is now appended with
>>>> ".".
> According to Julien Thewys on 2/8/2006 2:58 AM:
>> Solution is to reinstall 'base-files' (see
>> http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2006-02/msg00222.html).
>> 
>> My PATH was appended with '.' because of a trailing ';' in my Windows
>> PATH. 
> 
> Yes, this is correct behavior, but it often catches people by surprise.
> POSIX requires an empty string in your PATH to be treated as the current
> directory, and while people are less likely to start their Windows PATH
> with ; or to have ;; in the middle, a trailing ; is pretty common from
> applications that don't know any better on Windows.

  No, it's not quite correct behaviour - but the incorrectness isn't in the interpretation of $PATH, but in the way it is translated
from %PATH%.

  Since POSIX semantics requires an empty path component to be treated as $CWD, but Win32 semantics require an empty path component
to be ignored, the code that translates %PATH% to $PATH is not performing the translation correctly.  It should strip out empty
components from the win32 path if it wants to get a semantically-equivalent path setting.  Translating an empty win32 path component
into an empty posix path component is not translating like into like.


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/