Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:06:15 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: programming API to determine whether in "Cygwin environment"
Message-ID: <20080711050615.GA4181@ednor.casa.cgf.cx>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
References: <18395872 DOT post AT talk DOT nabble DOT com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <18395872.post@talk.nabble.com>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09)
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 08:49:06PM -0700, Tony Last wrote:
>
>My console program is built for native Windows (thus does not reply on
>cygwin1.dll). However, people may want to use it in a Cygwin environment and
>if they do I want it to behave in a suitably "Unixy" way. The obvious
>example is that when it prints out a pathname (which happens a lot) a Cygwin
>user would prefer to see it in Cygwin style, including forward slashes.
>
>So I'm looking for a boolean method which will allow a program to tell
>whether it was run from within a Cygwin shell. An environment variable would
>be fine as long as it's standard. In fact I see a number of env vars which
>would enable an educated guess but am wondering if there's a defined
>standard and safe way.

A PATH containing colons which weren't preceded by just a single
alphabetic character would be a clue but it wouldn't be foolproof.  A
HOME environment variable with no colons and forward slashes would be
another clue.  I don't think there is a foolproof test, though.

cgf

--
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/