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From: "Stephen Provine via cygwin" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Reply-To: Stephen Provine <stephpr AT microsoft DOT com>
To: "cygwin AT cygwin DOT com" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Command line processing in dcrt0.cc does not match Microsoft parsing rules
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2019 19:16:33 +0000
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The standard rules for Microsoft command line processing are documented here:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/17w5ykft(v=vs.85)

The Cygwin code for command line processing is in dcrt0.cc, function build_argv.

The behaviors do not match. For instance, given a test.sh script like this:

    #!/bin/bash
    echo $1

And the following invocation of bash.exe from a Windows command prompt:

    bash.exe test.sh foo\"bar

The result is:

    foo\bar

When the expected result is:

    foo"bar

As a workaround, you can achieve the expected result using:

    bash.exe test.sh "foo\"bar"

Which is great until you use a language like Go to shell exec the command line, and don't have control over how the command line string is generated from an original set of arguments. See:

    https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/syscall/exec_windows.go#L86

Go just reverses the Microsoft standard rules in the most efficient manner possible, but those command lines don't parse correctly in Cygwin processes.

Go implements a pretty definitive command line parsing algorithm as a replacement for the CommandLineToArgv function in shell32.dll:

    https://github.com/golang/go/commit/39c8d2b7faed06b0e91a1ad7906231f53aab45d1

The behavior here is based on a detailed analysis of what command line parsing "should" be in Windows:

    http://daviddeley.com/autohotkey/parameters/parameters.htm#WINARGV

It would be very nice if Cygwin followed the same procedure at startup.

Thanks,
Stephen


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