X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:29:47 -0500 From: Christopher Faylor To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: the .exe extension Message-ID: <20100312212947.GC28991@ednor.casa.cgf.cx> Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com References: <2BF01EB27B56CC478AD6E5A0A28931F2C1E28C AT A1DAL1SWPES19MB DOT ams DOT acs-inc DOT net> <4B9A5ADA DOT 2030708 AT redhat DOT com> <4B9A6291 DOT 90108 AT towo DOT net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4B9A6291.90108@towo.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , 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 Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 04:49:37PM +0100, Thomas Wolff wrote: >On 12.03.2010 16:16, Eric Blake wrote: >>> ... >>> >> This is an area of active conversation; if you would like, you can test >> the latest snapshot and the experimental coreutils 8.4-1 to see if the >> behavior is more intuitive (that is, there are more situations where >> .exe is preserved across file moves or copies, and fewer places where >> .exe is appended on a whim if the source didn't have one). >> >> In general, cygwin does not care if the .exe is missing, but other >> programs (particularly cmd) do, so it is better if PE-COFF files are >> given the .exe extension. But implementing it is tricky - for example, >> in the case of 'cat a> b', there is no way to tell at the time when b >> is created whether it will be populated with PE-COFF contents (that is, >> no way to tell whether the source was a literal 'a' or 'a.exe'), so you >> will not get an .exe in that case. >> >I'm just pondering the bold idea (probably to be discarded) that it >*could* be detected by "magic number" checking, i.e. renaming a new file >on-the-fly after a few bytes of PE-COFF have been written to its >beginning... 8-) ...which is pretty much what we're already doing... cgf -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple