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Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 18:02:11 +1000 (EST)
From: Luke Kendall <luke DOT kendall AT cisra DOT canon DOT com DOT au>
Subject: RE: Bizarre Cygwin/Explorer/paths problem half-solved
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On  4 Aug, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] wrote:
>  Luke Kendall wrote on Monday, August 04, 2008 4:18 AM:
>  
> > I discovered today that if I try to run Windows Explorer from the
> > Cygwin command line, and give it a pathname with spaces, it fails,
> > but if I give the same command line to a cmd.exe command line,
> > Explorer works!   
> > 
> > I.e. from Bash, explorer fails with an error message like "The path
> > '/e,c:\temp\space dir' does not exist or is not a directory." 
> > 
> > I've tried every quote combo I can.  If I leave off the /e option
> > then it does open the directory, but without the side pane (which is
> > what you'd expect with the /e option omitted).  
> > 
> > Bash shell:
> > 
> >     $ mkdir c:/temp/"space dir"
> > 
> >     $ explorer /e,c:\\temp\\space\ dir
> >     $ # NBG^
> >     $ explorer /e,c:\\temp
> >     $ # GOOD^
> >     $ explorer c:\\temp\\space\ dir
> >     $ # GOOD^ (but no side pane)
> >     $ explorer /e,"c:\temp\space dir"
> >     $ # NBG^
> >     $ explorer /e,"\"c:\temp\space dir\""
> >     $ # NBG^
> > 
> > DOS shell:
> > 
> >     c>explorer /e,c:\temp\space dir
> >     c>rem  GOOD^
> >     c>explorer /e,"c:\temp\space dir"
> >     c>rem  GOOD^
> >     c>explorer /e,'c:\temp\space dir'
> >     c>rem  NBG^
> >     c>explorer /e,c:\temp\space dir
> >     c>rem  NBG^
> > 
> > Until I tried the same stuff under the DOS shell, I assumed it was
> > explorer.exe that was busted.  Now I'm just confused. 
> > 
> > I find this quite bizarre.  Any suggestions?  Is bash or Cygwin
> > guessing the /e option is part of a path, and doing some extra
> > quoting of its own or something?  
> > 
> > I just tried an strace on bash, and it looks like this guess is
> > correct: 
> > 
> >   140 4166625 [main] bash 5696 spawn_guts: null_app_name 0
> >    (c:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe, c:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
> > "/e,c:\temp\space dir") 
> > 
> > It's collected all the arguments and put them inside double quotes,
> > and if I do that in a DOS shell too I get the exact same failure. 
> > 
> > If the directory contains no spaces, then bash does this, in contrast:
> > 
> > 12217 33394057 [main] bash 5284 spawn_guts: 5284 = spawn_guts 
> > (/cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/explorer, c:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe /e,c:\temp) 
> > 
> > Is there some way to tell Bash/Cygwin not to do this?  Or is it
> > simply that my bash is too old? 
> > 
> > $ bash --version
> > GNU bash, version 3.2.9(10)-release (i686-pc-cygwin) Copyright (C)
> > 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 
>  
>  As a work-around, you might try the -x or --explore option of cygstart.
>  I use it in the following script (which I cal "explore"), though a
>  shell function might be better if you use this a lot.
>  
>  ====[ cut ]====
>  #!/bin/bash
>  /bin/cygstart --explore "${1:-.}"
>  ====[ cut ]====
>  
>  "${1:-.}" makes explorer open in the current working directory run
>  without an argument.
>  
>  If this does not do what you want, you could always try launching
>  explorer with cygstart (without -x, giving you control of explorer's
>  command line arguments) or cmd /c start.  And one way to get rid of
>  spaces is to go to that directory.  You could just
>  
>  $ pushd /cygpath/c/temp/space\ dir
>  $ explorer /e,.
>  $ popd

I'd have to cygpath it to Unix format first ...

I found your cygstart suggestion a nicer approach - thanks!  It works
well, except that none of the options to prevent the window from taking
focus work when explorer is the thing that gets started.  That's
annoying when I run my script to restore bash/Explorer/Internet Explorer
session (i.e. windows) in interactive mode, but I can live with it.
 
Thanks again!

luke

>  Good luck!
>  
>  - Barry
>    -  Disclaimer: Statements made herein are not made on behalf of NIAID.
>  



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