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Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 09:26:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Peshansky <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Eric Thomas <ethomas AT claranet DOT fr>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: program fails to find it's DLL
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On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, Eric Thomas wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've got an issue here with some command line programs, all from the
> same editor.
>
> Commands are issued from bash 3.0.16-14 / cygwin 1.5.18-1 on a
> computer running W2K SP4.
> Everything was ok until someone introduced an invalid path in the
> default PATH that bash inherits from cmd.exe .
> Let's say that PATH is made of 3 parts:
> A : valid path
> B : invalid path ("invalid" means that it raise my issue)
> C : valid path
>
> Since, those programs raise a pop-up to complain that some DLL is
> missing in "path displayed".
> But "path displayed" is incomplete. In fact "path displayed" is only the
> A part.
> The missing DLL belongs to one dir of the C part.
> So, this invalid value prevents the program to look further in the last
> part of PATH.
>
> Well, one would think that the problem is only on the program's side
> (and maybe it is). But there are other arguments to look at too.
>
> Only some kind of path format can raise the issue.
> Let's say that
> /cygdrive/c/a   is a directory
> /cygdrive/c/b   is a regular file
> /cygdrive/c/c   does not exist
>
> Issue raised with
> /cygdrive/c/b/
> /cygdrive/c/b/anyfilename_or_dirname
>
> It will also happen with a true invalid path like this one:
> /cygdrive/sure_I_am_an_invalid_path
>
> But the following won't:
> /cygdrive/c/a
> /cygdrive/c/b
> /cygdrive/c/c
> everything that doesn't start with /cygdrive
>
> Facts:
> - I didn't managed to reproduce the problem when issuing the command
> directly from a cmd.exe, excepted by setting PATH to "" of course. But
> an invalid path placed in PATH does not hurt.
> - I didn't managed to reproduce the problem with any other program that
> would requiere some DLL (excel for instance)
>
> So it makes me think that It could be related to cygwin in some way,
> even if it occurs only with those programs because they probably behave
> differently from other programs...
>
> I've done a fresh installation of cygwin (bash 3.1-6 / cygwin 1.5.21-2)
> on another computer.
> Some changes with this one:
> - no more pop-up, but the program still fails to run due to its missing
> DLL
> - now "/regular_file/" will also raise the problem (at least this point
> is consistent now)
>
> Could those programs explicitly load some DLL after they start-up ? and
> rely on PATH to do it on purpuse ?
> If so, they manage to deal with invalid path when running from cmd.exe.
> Something must be different when run from bash.
>
> Just in case you wonder: same behaviour with ash.
>
> Any comment welcome and appreciated

Known issue.  It's not the shell, actually -- it's Cygwin's path
conversion.  It will stop converting the path as soon as it encounters an
invalid directory.  This also arises when some broken installers put
quotes in the PATH.

I believe I've had a patch for this somewhere, though don't recall whether
it was applied or not.  You might want to search the cygwin-patches
archive and look at path.cc in Cygwin sources.  I'll try to locate the
patch file and resubmit.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_	    pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu | igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		Igor Peshansky, Ph.D. (name changed!)
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		old name: Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

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"But no -- you are no fool; you call yourself a fool, there's proof enough in
that!" -- Rostand, "Cyrano de Bergerac"

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