Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
From: design AT netcom DOT com (Chris Waters)
Subject: Re: Changing directories in BASH
Message-ID: <designE1Jp8o.F3D@netcom.com>
Organization: Design and Delivery
References: <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 961127081248 DOT 5811A-100000 AT is>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 20:07:36 GMT
Lines: 30
Sender: design AT netcom18 DOT netcom DOT com
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

In article <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 961127081248 DOT 5811A-100000 AT is>,
Eli Zaretskii  <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> wrote:
>
>On Tue, 26 Nov 1996, David May wrote:
>
>> I lost the original message asking help about changing directory into 
>> the c:\Program Files directory under Windows 95 under bash.
[...]

>Since Unix generally doesn't support such directory names, I'd guess 
>`bash' fails to support them too.

WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP SAYING THIS??  Unix supports file/directory names
with spaces JUST FINE!  Posting statements about OSes you aren't
familiar with on the net is not a good idea!

An OBVIOUS reason why bash won't change to "c:\Program Files" is that
the backslash (\) has a special meaning under bash.  Unix uses a forward
slash (/) as a directory seperator, and bash probably expects the same.

If that doesn't fix the problem, then it *is* something wrong with the
port, but it's *not* related to bash's ignorance of filenames with
spaces, since bash isn't ignorant of filenames with spaces.  You can
either quote the filename or escape the spaces under Unix, and it works
fine.

Bash may also be confused by the "c:" which, since it doesn't start with
a slash, may cause bash to think it has a relative pathname.  The
original message, however, didn't mention a drive specifier.  It just
said, "can't cd to \Program Files."