X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com
X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-6.9 required=5.0	tests=AWL,BAYES_00,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI,SPF_HELO_PASS,T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD
X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
Message-ID: <4C7FE938.6060806@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:13:12 -0600
From: Eric Blake <eblake AT redhat DOT com>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100806 Fedora/3.1.2-1.fc13 Mnenhy/0.8.3 Thunderbird/3.1.2
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Windows-style pathname does not work as command - why?
References: <4C7FE2C2 DOT 8060104 AT fgm DOT com>
In-Reply-To: <4C7FE2C2.8060104@fgm.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-IsSubscribed: yes
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.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 09/02/2010 11:45 AM, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> I don't quite understand this behavior:
>
> $ ls C:\\tools\\emacs-23.2\\bin\\runemacs.exe
> C:\tools\emacs-23.2\bin\runemacs.exe
> $ C:\\tools\\emacs-23.2\\bin\\runemacs.exe
> bash: C:\tools\emacs-23.2\bin\runemacs.exe: command not found
>
> In particular, why is it that bash does not understand that Windows
> pathname when it is used as a command argument, even though bash and
> Cygwin clearly understand it when it is used as a command argument?
>
>
> Is that behavior a bug (e.g., does bash try to judge whether the command
> is an absolute vs. relative pathname without either first converting to
> a Unix-style pathname or otherwise recognizing Windows-style pathname)?

You're not the first to notice this, but it's also not the highest 
priority on my list to look into, because we already recommend using 
POSIX style paths in the first place.

> Or is it some known irregularity (resulting from trying to handle both
> Windows- and Unix-style pathnames) that couldn't be resolved?

Oh, I'm sure that bash could be patched to be smarter about DOS-style 
pathnames.  But no one has been bothered by it enough to write a patch yet.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake AT redhat DOT com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

--
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